When Nicholas reached his father’s house he did not enter the little whitewashed gate, but kept on to the log cabin on the edge of General Battle’s land, where Uncle Ish was passing his declining years in poverty and independence.  The cabin stood above a little gully which skirted the dividing line of the pastures, facing, in its primitive nudity, the level stretch of the shadowless highway.  It was a rotting, one-room dwelling, with a wide doorway opening upon a small, bare strip of ground where a gnarled oak grew.  In the rear there was a small garden, denuded now of its modest vegetables, only the leafy foliage of a late pea crop retaining a semblance of fruitfulness.

Nicholas went up the narrow path leading from the road to the hut, and placed the bag on the smooth, round stone which served for a step.  As he did so, the doorway abruptly darkened, and a girl came from the interior and paused with her foot upon the threshold.  He saw, in an upward glance, that it was Eugenia Battle, and, from the light wicker basket on her arm, he inferred that, in the absence of Uncle Ish, she had been engaged in supplying his simple wants.  That the old negro was still cared for by the Battles he was aware, though upon the means of his livelihood Uncle Ish, himself, was singularly reticent.

As Eugenia saw him she flushed slightly, as one caught in a secret charity, and promptly pointed to the bag of meal.

“Whose is that?”

He looked from the girl to the bag and back again, his own cheek reddening.  At the instant it occurred to him that it was a peculiar greeting after a separation of years.

“It belongs to Uncle Ish,” he answered, with unreasonable embarrassment.  “I believe your father gave it to him.”

“He might have brought it home for him,” was her comment, and immediately: 

“Where is he?”

“Uncle Ish?  He’s on the road.”

Her next remark probed deeper, and he winced.

“What were you doing with it?”

Her gaze was warming upon him.  He met it and laughed aloud.

“Toting it,” he responded lightly.

She was still warming.  He saw the glow kindle in her eyes and illumine her sombre face; it was like the leaping of light to the surface.  As she stood midway of the entrance, in a frame of unpolished logs, her white and black beauty against the smoky gloom of the interior, the red sunset before her feet, he recalled swiftly an allegorical figure of Night he had once seen in an old engraving.  Then, before the charm of her smile, the recollection passed as it had come.

“You may bring in the bag,” she said, with the authority of one accustomed to much service.  “I found he had very little left to eat.  We have to bring him things secretly, and he pretends the Lord feeds him as He fed the prophet.”

She reentered the hut, and Nicholas, stepping lightly in the fear that his weight might hasten the fall of the logs, deposited the bag upon a pine table, where an ash cake lay ready for the embers.  In a little cupboard he saw the contents of Eugenia’s basket—­a cold fried chicken and some coffee and sugar.  Before the hearth there was a comfortable rocking chair, and a bright coloured quilt was upon the bed.  As he turned away the girl spoke swiftly: