e in a carriage she has perhaps grown
tired of."

"Madame is pleased to tease me as people tease children for being
afraid in the dark," explained Louise. "I am not afraid, but the
silence does give one a chill. I shall be glad to reach the door of
your house."

"And we must hasten. Remember all the messages, Pluto; bring your Miss
Lena tomorrow and any of the others who will come."

"I remember, sure. Glad I was first to see yo' all back--good night."

The other colored men in the background had lost all interest in the
'possum hunt, and were intent listeners to the conversation. Old
Nelse, who had kept up to the rest with much difficulty, now pushed
himself forward for a nearer look into the carriage. Mrs. McVeigh did
not notice him. But he startled the Marquise as he thrust his white
bushy head and aged face over the wheel just as they were starting,
and the woman Louise drew back with a gasp of actual fear.

"What a stare he gave us!" she said, as they rolled away from the
group by the roadside. "That old man had eyes like augers, and he
seemed to look through me--may I ask if he, also, is of your
plantation, Madame?"

"Indeed, he is not," was Mrs. McVeigh's reassuring answer. "But he did
not really mean to be impertinent; just some childish old 'uncle' who
is allowed special privileges, I suppose. No; you won't see any one
like that at the Terrace. I can't think who it could be unless it is
Nelse, an old free man of Loring's; and Nelse used to have better
manners than that, but he is very old--nearly ninety, they say. I
don't imagine he knows his own age exactly--few of the older ones
do."

Pluto caught the old man by the shoulder and fairly lifted him out of
the road as the carriage started.

"What the matter with yo', anyway, a pitchen' yo'self 'gainst the
wheel that-a-way?" he demanded. "Yo' ain't boun' and sot to get run
over, are yo'?"

Some of the other men laughed, but Nelse gripped Pluto's hand as
though in need of the support.

"Fo' God!--thought I seen a ghost, that minute," he gasped, as the
other men started after the dogs again; "the ghost of a woman what
ain't dead yet--the ghost o' Retta."

"Yo' plum crazy, ole man," said Pluto, disdainfully. "How the ghost o'
that Marg'ret get in my mistress carriage, I like to know?--'special
as the woman's as live as any of us. Yo' gone 'stracted with all the
talken' 'bout that Marg'ret's story. Now, _I_ ain't seen a mite of
likeness to her in that