A little later Caesar shuffled forward, the wineglass in his hand.  The judge turned towards him.  “Is that you, Caesar?” he asked.

The old negro hurried to the bedside.  “Here I is, Marse George; I’se right yer.”

The judge laughed softly.  “I wouldn’t take five thousand dollars for you, Caesar,” he said.  “Tom Battle offered me one thousand for you, and I told him I wouldn’t take five.  You are worth it, Caesar—­every cent of it—­but there’s no man alive shall own you.  You’re free, Caesar—­do you hear, you’re free!”

“Thanky, Marse George,” said Caesar.  He passed his arm under the judge’s head and raised him as he would a child.  As the glass touched his lips the judge spoke in a clear voice.  “To the ladies!” he cried.

“He is regaining the use of his limbs,” whispered Mrs. Burwell softly.  “He will be well again,” and Nicholas left the room and went downstairs.  At the door he gave his instructions to a woman servant.  “I shall return to spend the night,” he said.  “You will see that my room is ready.  Yes, I’ll be back to supper.”  He had had no dinner, but at the moment this was forgotten.  In the relief that had come to him he wanted solitude and the breadth of the open fields.  He was going over the old ground again—­to breathe the air and feel the dust of the Old Stage Road.

He passed the naked walls of the church and followed the wide white street to the college gate.  Then, turning, he faced the way to his father’s farm and the distant pines emblazoned on the west.

A clear gold light flooded the landscape, warming the pale dust of the deserted road.  The air was keen with the autumn tang, and as he walked the quick blood leaped to his cheeks.  He was no longer conscious of his forty years—­his boyhood was with him, and middle age was a dream, or less than a dream.

In the branch road a fall of tawny leaves hid the ruts of wheels, and the sun, striking the ground like a golden lance, sent out sharp, fiery sparks as from a mine of light.  Overhead the red trees rustled.

It was here that Eugenia had ridden beside him in the early morning—­here he had seen her face against the enkindled branches—­and here he had placed the scarlet gum leaves in her horse’s bridle.  The breeze in the wood came to him like the echo of her laugh, faded as the memory of his past passion.  Well, he had more than most men, for he had the ghost of a laugh and the shadow of love.

Passing his father’s house, he went on beyond the fallen shanty of Uncle Ish into the twilight of the cedars.  At the end of the avenue he saw the rows of box—­twisted and tall with age—­leading to the empty house, where the stone steps were wreathed in vines.  Did Eugenia ever come back, he wondered, or was the house to crumble as Miss Chris’s rockery had done?  On the porch he saw the marks made by the general’s chair, which had been removed, and on one of the long green benches there was an E cut in a childish hand.  At a window above—­Eugenia’s window—­a shutter hung back upon its hinges, and between the muslin curtains it seemed to him that a face looked out and smiled—­not the face of Eugenia, but a ghost again, the ghost of his old romance.