ightgown, but here was
something different. He stood before Aunt Cindy and Jake with blazing
eyes and defied them. He forebade Jake to hitch up Nelly.

"He's goin' to stay here, I tell you! He's goin' to stay wif me!"

"Lordy, lordy!" laughed Jake, and fell back three steps, his hand over
his mouth. "Ain't dat boy like he paw!"

"He's goin' to stay wif me! He's goin' to stay wif me!"

And even Aunt Cindy gave in. The spirit of Steve Earle had spoken in
Steve Earle's child.

When they went back into the kitchen an oblivious diner sat at the
kitchen table, bent over a plate, and still mopped up blackberry jam
with buttered biscuit.

That night the full moon, declining over the sheltering eaves of the
mansion, sent its rays into the windows of the big upstairs bedroom.
First they fell on a bed where lay one boy asleep, as he had slept all
his life, on soft mattresses, between white sheets. Then the silver
light crept slowly over the bed, across the floor, where it seemed to
linger a while on a pile of toys--an engine with three passenger cars, a
red hook and ladder whose fiery horses galloped forever, a picture book
open at the place where a man in shaggy skins, with a shaggy umbrella,
stared with bulging eyes at a track in the sand. And last this gentle
light climbed upon another bed and embraced a swarthy little figure
lying on its side, one arm stretched out, one fist closed tight, as if
to keep fast hold on this chance life had thrown his way.

Never before had this child slept on a soft mattress, never before in a
clean nightgown; never before that night had he seen a tiled bathroom
and a white tub where water ran. On one sturdy leg that braced the body
as it lay on the side the moonlight revealed a ridged place, a scar,
purple and hard. But the hard grin was gone now, the face in repose; and
the peering moon, which so silently inspected that room and its inmates,
might have had a hard time deciding, so serene were the two small faces,
which, in the years to come, would be, please God, the gentleman, and
which, God forbid, the ruffian!

The two were up at sunrise. Jennie, the maid, dressed them in clothes
just alike--all except shoes--Joe drew the line there. They ate
breakfast in the dining room, Tommy in his own chair, the visitor
elevated to the proper height by a dictionary. They ate oatmeal and
cream, waffles and syrup. While the dew still sparkled on the lawn and
on the thousands of tiny morning spiderw