en I
was married after the war--said 't was all she had to give, and my wife
thinks the world and all of it; won't let me have it 'cept as a favor;
but this mornin' she told me to take it--said 'twould bring me luck.' He
took a big bandana out of his pocket and held it up in the moonlight. I
remembered it as one of my father's.

"'She 'll make me give it up to-morrow night when I git home,' he
chuckled.

"We had turned into a road through the plantations, and had just come to
the fork where Halloway's road turned off toward his place.

"'I lays a heap to your mother's door--purty much all this, I reckon.'
His eye swept the moon-bathed scene before him. 'But for her I might n't
'a got _her_. And ain't a' man in the world got a happier home, or as
good a wife.' He waved his hand toward the little homestead that was
sleeping in the moonlight on the slope the other side of the stream, a
picture of peace.

"His path went down a little slope, and mine kept along the side of the
hill until it entered the woods. A great sycamore tree grew right in
the fork, with its long, hoary arms extending over both roads, making a
broad mass of shadow in the white moonlight.

"The next day was the day of election. Hal-loway was at one poll and I
was at another; so I did not see him that day. But he sent me word that
evening that he had carried his poll, and I rode home knowing that we
should have peace.

"I was awakened next morning by the news that both Halloway and his
wife had been murdered the night before. I at once galloped over to his
place, and was one of the first to get there. It was a horrible sight.
Halloway had evidently been waylaid and killed by a blow of an axe just
as he was entering his yard gate, and then the door of the house had
been broken open and his wife had been killed, after which Halloway 's
body had been dragged into the house, and the house had been fired with
the intention of making it appear that the house had burned by accident.
But by one of those inscrutable fatalities, the fire, after burning half
of two walls, had gone out.

"It was a terrible sight, and the room looked like a shambles. Halloway
had plainly been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back
of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had
died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at the
instant--perhaps, of the greeting that always awaited him on the click
of his latch; perhaps, of his