“I’ve had supper,” he answered shortly, adding from force of habit, “where’s ma?”

Nannie motioned towards the kitchen and drew a little nearer the lamp, while Nicholas left the room in search of his stepmother.

Marthy Burr, a pile of newly dug potatoes on the floor beside her, was carefully sorting them before storing them for winter use.  The sound ones she laid in a basket at her right hand, those that were of imperfect growth or showed signs of decay she threw into a hamper that was kept in the kitchen closet.

“You ought to make Jubal do this,” said Nicholas as he entered.

“I wouldn’t trust the thickest skinned potato in the field in his hands,” returned Marthy sharply.  “He an’ yo’ pa made out to store ’em last year, an’ when I went to look in the first barrel, the last one of ’em had rotted.”

“Let them rot,” said Nicholas harshly.  “I be damned if I’d care.  You don’t eat them, anyway.”

“I reckon if I was a man I might consarn myself ’bout the things that tickle my own palate—­an’ ’taters ain’t one of ’em,” was his stepmother’s retort.  “But, being a woman, it seems I’ve got to spend my life slavin’ for other folks’ stomachs.  But you’re yo’ Uncle Nick Sales all over again; ‘Don’t you get up befo’ day to set that dough, Marthy,’ he’d say, but when the bread came on flat as a pancake, he’d look sourer than all the rest.”

“What was my Uncle Nick Sales like?” asked Nicholas indifferently.  He knew the name, but he had never heard the man’s story.

“All book larnin’ an’ mighty little sense—­just like you,” replied his stepmother with repressed pride in her voice.  “Could read the Bible in an outlandish tongue an’ was too big a fool to come in out of the rain.  He used to sit up all night at his books—­an’ fall asleep the next day at the plough.  He was the wisest fool I ever see.”

“Poor fool!” said Nicholas softly.  It was the epitaph over the unmarked grave of that other member of his race who had blazed the thorny path before him.  A strange, pathetic figure rose suddenly in his vision—­a man with a great brow and a twisted back, with brawny, knotted hands—­an unlearned student driving the plough, an ignorant philosopher dragging the mire.

“Poor fool!” he said again.  “What did his learning do for him?”

“It killed him,” returned his stepmother shortly.

She stood before him wiping her gnarled hands on her soiled apron.  His gaze fell upon her, and he wondered angrily whence sprung her indomitable energy—­the energy that could expend itself upon potatoes.  Her face was sharpened until it seemed to become all feature—­there were hollows in the narrow temples, and where the pale, thin hair was drawn tightly over the head he could trace the prominent bones of the skull.

As he looked at her his own petty suffering was overshadowed by the visible tragedy of her life—­the sordid tragedy where unconsciousness was pathos.  He reached out quickly and took a corner of her apron in his hand.  It was the strongest demonstration of affection he had ever made to her.