into the yard, a bare-headed old nigger with a game leg
throwed down an armful of wood he was gathering and went limping up
to the veranda as fast as he could. He opened the door and bawled out,
pointing to us, before he had it fairly open:

"O Marse WILLyum! O Miss LUCY! Dey've brung him home! DAR he!"

A little, bright, black-eyed old lady like a wren comes running out of
the house, and chirps:

"O Bud--O my honey boy! Is he dead?"

"I reckon not, Miss Lucy," says Bud raising himself up on the mattress
as she runs up to the wagon, and trying to act like everything was all
a joke. She was jest high enough to kiss him over the edge of the wagon
box. A worried-looking old gentleman come out the door, seen Bud and his
mother kissing each other, and then says to the old nigger man:

"George, yo' old fool, what do yo' mean by shouting out like that?"

"Marse Willyum--" begins George, explaining.

"Shut up," says the old gentleman, very quiet. "Take the bay mare and go
for Doctor Po'ter." Then he comes to the wagon and says:

"So they got yo', Bud? Yo' WOULD go nightriding like a rowdy and a thug!
Are yo' much hurt?"

He said it easy and gentle, more than mad. But Bud, he flushed up, pale
as he was, and didn't answer his dad direct. He turned to his mother and
said:

"Miss Lucy, dear, it would 'a' done yo' heart good to see the way them
trust warehouses blazed up!"

And the old lady, smiling and crying both to oncet, says, "God bless her
brave boy." But the old gentleman looked mighty serious, and his worry
settled into a frown between his eyes, and he turns to me and says:

"Yo' must pardon us, sir, fo' neglecting to thank yo' sooner." I told
him that would be all right, fur him not to worry none. And him and me
and Mandy, which was the nigger cook, got Bud into the house and into
his bed. And his mother gets that busy ordering Mandy and the old
gentleman around, to get things and fix things, and make Bud as easy
as she could, that you could see she was one of them kind of woman that
gets a lot of satisfaction out of having some one sick to fuss over. And
after quite a while George gets back with Doctor Porter.

He sets Bud's arm, and he locates the bullet in him, and he says he
guesses he'll do in a few weeks if nothing like blood poisoning nor
gangrene nor inflammation sets in.

Only the doctor says he "reckons" instead of he "guesses," which they
all do down there. And they all had them easy-going, wait-a