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ght, Seventh star I've seen to-night; I wish I may and I wish I might Have the wish come true I wish to-night." Then he made his wish again, with a heart felt earnestness that was almost an ache. Oh, surely the day was not going to end in this cruel silence! Just then he heard the thud of a horse's hoofs on the wooden bridge, far down the road. Nearer and louder it came. Somebody was prancing by at last. He stood up, straining his eyes in his smiling eagerness to see. Nearer and nearer the hoof-beats came in the starlight. "_Bookity book! Bookity book!_" The horseman paused a moment in front of Uncle Billy's. John Jay hopped from one foot to the other in his impatient gladness. Then his heart sank as the hoof-beats went on down the road, _Bookity book! Bookity book!_ growing fainter and fainter, until at last they were drowned by the voices of the noisy katydids. He stood still a moment, so bitterly disappointed that it seemed to him he could not possibly bear it. Then he went in and shut the door,--shut the door on all his bright hopes, on all his fond dreams, on the day that was to have held such happiness, but that had brought instead the cruelest disappointment of his life. The tears ran down his little black face as he undressed himself. He sat on the edge of the trundle-bed a moment, whispering brokenly, "They wasn't anybody livin' that cared 'bout it's bein' my buthday!" Then throwing himself face downward on his pillow, he cried softly with long choking sobs, until he fell asleep. CHAPTER VI. Although John Jay bore many a deep scar, both in mind and body, very little of his life had been given to sackcloth and ashes. "Wish I could take trouble as easy as that boy," sighed Mammy. "It slides right off'n him like watah off a duck's back." "He's like the rollin' stone that gethah's no moss," remarked Uncle Billy. "He goes rollickin' through the days, from sunup 'twel sundown, so fast that disappointment and sorrow get rubbed off befo' they kin strike root." Despite all his troubles, if John Jay had been marking his good times with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all around the little cabin by the end of the summer. There were two days especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue. [Illustration:
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