oment and
cover my head with the shawl. A flash of lightning revealed a tall,
ragged man looking in at the doorway. I lay close to Uncle Eb imagining
much evil of that vision but made no outcry.

Snugged in between my two companions I felt reasonably secure and soon
fell asleep. The sun, streaming in at the open door, roused me in the
morning. At the beginning of each day of our journey I woke to find
Uncle Eb cooking at the fire. He was lying beside me, this morning, his
eyes open.

'Fraid I'm hard sick,' he said as I kissed him.

'What's the matter?' I enquired.

He struggled to a sitting posture, groaning so it went to my heart.

'Rheumatiz,' he answered presently.

He got to his feet, little by little, and every move he made gave him
great pain. With one hand on his cane and the other on my shoulder he
made his way slowly to the broken gate. Even now I can see clearly the
fair prospect of that high place--a valley reaching to distant hills and
a river winding through it, glimmering in the sunlight; a long wooded
ledge breaking into naked, grassy slopes on one side of the valley and
on the other a deep forest rolling to the far horizon; between them big
patches of yellow grain and white buckwheat and green pasture land and
greener meadows and the straight road, with white houses on either side
of it, glorious in a double fringe of golden rod and purple aster and
yellow John's-wort and the deep blue of the Jacob's ladder.

'Looks a good deal like the promised land,' said Uncle Eb. 'Hain't got
much further t' go.'

He sat on the rotting threshold while I pulled some of the weeds in
front of the doorstep and brought kindlings out of the house and built a
fire. While we were eating I told Uncle Eb of the man that I had seen in
the night.

'Guess you was dreamin',' he said, and, while I stood firm for the
reality of that I had seen, it held our thought only for a brief moment.
My companion was unable to walk that day so we lay by, in the shelter of
the old house, eating as little of our scanty store as we could do
with. I went to a spring near by for water and picked a good mess of
blackberries that I hid away until supper time, so as to surprise Uncle
Eb. A longer day than that we spent in the old house, after our coming,
I have never known. I made the room a bit tidier and gathered more grass
for bedding. Uncle Eb felt better as the day grew warm. I had a busy
time of it that morning bathing his back in the s