life or stir, except a
brood of well-grown chickens, which, with their mother, were huddled on
the door step, evidently contemplating an entrance into the house, the
door of which was open, as were the shutters to the windows, which were
minus glass, as was the fashion of many old Florida houses in the days
before the Civil War. With a shoo to the chickens, which sent some into
the house and others flying into the yard, the stranger stepped to the
door and knocked, once very gently, then more decidedly--then, as there
came no response, he ventured in, and driving out the chickens, one of
which had mounted upon a table and was pecking at a few crumbs of bread
left there, he sat down and looked about him. In the loft which could
hardly be dignified with the name chamber, he heard a low murmur of
voices, and the sound of footsteps moving rapidly, as if some one were
in a hurry. The room in which he sat was evidently living and
dining-room both, and was destitute of everything which he deemed
necessary to comfort. He had been in a Cracker's house before, and it
seemed to him now that his heart turned over when he recalled his visits
there, and his utter disregard of his surroundings.

"I was a fool, and blind, then; but I can see now," he said to himself,
as he looked around at the marks of poverty, or shiftlessness, or both,
and contrasted them with his home in the North.

The floor was bare, with the exception of a mat laid before the door
leading into another and larger room, before one of the windows of which
a white curtain was gently blowing in the wind. A rough, uncovered table
pushed against the wall, three or four chairs, and a hair-cloth settee
completed the furniture, with the exception of a low rocking-chair, in
which sat huddled and wrapped in a shawl a little old woman whose
yellow, wrinkled face told of the snuff habit, and bore a strong
resemblance to a mummy, except that the woman wore a cap with a fluted
frill, and moved her head up and down like Christmas toys of old men and
women. She was evidently asleep, as she gave no sign of consciousness
that any one was there.

"Old Miss," the stranger said, and his breath again came gaspingly, and
Tom Hardy's advice looked more and more reasonable, while he cursed
himself for the fool he had been, and would have given all he was worth,
and even half his life, to be rid of this thing weighing him down like a
nightmare from which he could not awaken.

He was rou