“Don’t seem yeahs ago to me, suh.  Huh!  De only blow dat evuh fell upon my back!  But yo’ snatched dat whip out of his ban’ an’ den yo’ laid it, with ev’y ounce of stren’th war in yo’, right acrost his face!”

Layson, unwilling to be harsh with the old man and forbid him to say more, ostentatiously busied himself, now, about the table with the frying-pan and other dishes, hoping, thus, to discourage further talk of this sort.

“No, suh,” Neb went on with shaking head, “I jus’ nachelly don’ like him.  Don’t like either of ’em.  An’ he, Marse Frank, he nevuh will fuhgit dat blow, an’ don’t you think he will!”

“That’s all over, long ago,” said Frank, as he put the finishing touches on the old man’s supper.  “And what had Barbara to do with it?  She can’t help what her father does.”

Neb drew up to the table with a continuously shaking head.  For months he had desired to speak his mind to his young master, but had never dared to take so great a liberty.  Now the unusual circumstances they were placed in, the fact that he had been lost in the mountains in his service and half scared to death, imbued him with new boldness.

“She kain’t he’p what he does, suh, no,” said he.  “But listen, now, Marse Frank, to po’ ol’ Neb.  De pizen vine hit don’t b’ar peaches, an’ nightshade berries—­dey ain’t hulsome, eben ef dey’re pooty.”

“Neb, stop that!” Layson commanded sharply.

The old negro half slipped from the chair in which he had been sitting wearily.  Once he had started on the speech which he had made his mind up, months ago, that, some day, he would screw his courage up to, he would not be stopped.

“Oh, honey,” he exclaimed, holding out his tremulous old hands in a gesture of appeal, while the fire-light flickered on a face on which affection and real sincerity were plain, “I’s watched ovuh you evuh sence yo’ wuh a baby, an’ when I see dat han’some face o’ hers was drawin’ of yo’ on, it jus’ nigh broke my ol’ brack heaht, it did.  It did, Marse Frank, fo’ suah.”

The young man could not reprimand the aged negro.  He knew that all he said came from the heart, a heart as utterly unselfish and devoted in its love as human heart could be.

“Oh, pshaw, Neb!” he said soothingly.  “Don’t worry.  Perhaps I did go just a bit too far with Barbara—­young folks, you know!—­but that’s all over, now.”  Again he wondered most uncomfortably if this were really true, again his mind made its comparisons between the bluegrass girl and sweet Madge Brierly.  “There’s no danger that Woodlawn will have any other mistress than my dear Aunt ’Lethe for many a long year,” he concluded rather lamely.

The emotion of the ancient darky worried him.  It was proof that evidence of a love affair with Barbara Holton had been plain to every eye, he thought.

Neb now slid wholly from the chair and dropped upon his knees close by the youth he loved, grasping his hand and pressing it against his faithful heart.