On the day of which I am writing, at any rate, I was troubled by no misgivings.  I had seen something new, and was only desirous to see more of it.  Who does not love an original character?  For at least half an hour the old mill was forgotten, while I chased the grackle about, as he flew hither and thither, sometimes with a loggerhead shrike in furious pursuit.  Once I had gone a few rods into the palmetto scrub, partly to be nearer the bird, but still more to enjoy the shadow of a pine, and was standing under the tree, motionless, when a man came along the road in a gig.  “Surveying?” he asked, reining in his horse.  “No, sir; I am looking at a bird in the tree yonder.”  I wished him to go on, and thought it best to gratify his curiosity at once.  He was silent a moment; then he said, “Looking at the old sugar house from there?” That was too preposterous, and I answered with more voice, and perhaps with a touch of impatience, “No, no; I am trying to see a bird in that pine-tree.”  He was silent again.  Then he gathered up the reins.  “I’m so deaf I can’t hear you,” he said, and drove on.  “Good-by,” I remarked, in a needless undertone; “you’re a good man, I’ve no doubt, but deaf people shouldn’t be inquisitive at long range.”

The advice was sound enough, in itself considered; properly understood, it might be held to contain, or at least to suggest, one of the profoundest, and at the same time one of the most practical, truths of all devout philosophy; but the testiness of its tone was little to my credit.  He was a good man,—­and the village doctor,—­and more than once afterward put me under obligation.  One of his best appreciated favors was unintended and indirect.  I was driving with him through the hammock, and we passed a bit of swamp.  “There are some pretty flowers,” he exclaimed; “I think I must get them.”  At the word he jumped out of the gig, bade me do the same, hitched his horse, a half-broken stallion, to a sapling, and plunged into the thicket.  I strolled elsewhere; and by and by he came back, a bunch of common blue iris in one hand, and his shoes and stockings in the other.  “They are very pretty,” he explained (he spoke of the flowers), “and it is early for them.”  After that I had no doubt of his goodness, and in case of need would certainly have called him rather than his younger rival at the opposite end of the village.

When I tired of chasing the grackle, or the shrike had driven him away (I do not remember now how the matter ended), I started again toward the old sugar mill.  Presently a lone cabin came into sight.  The grass-grown road led straight to it, and stopped at the gate.  Two women and a brood of children stood in the door, and in answer to my inquiry one of the women (the children had already scampered out of sight) invited me to enter the yard.  “Go round the house,” she said, “and you will find a road that runs right down to the mill.”