“Sutny ’twill,” assented his wife; then she added, in reply to the rest of the remark, “Nuver min’; den we’ll see what he got in dyah.”  To a woman, that was at least some compensation.  Ephraim’s thoughts had taken a new direction.

“He al’ays feared he marster’d come for him while he ’way,” he said, in mere continuance of his last remark.

“He sen’ me wud he marster comin’ to-night, an he want he shut,” said his wife, as she handed him his supper.  Ephraim’s face expressed more than interest; it was tenderness which softened the rugged lines as he sat looking into the fire.  Perhaps he thought of the old man’s loneliness, and of his own father torn away and sold so long ago, before he could even remember, and perhaps very dimly of the beauty of the sublime devotion of this poor old creature to his love and his trust, holding steadfast beyond memory, beyond reason, after the knowledge even of his own identity and of his very name was lost.

The woman caught the contagion of his sympathy.

“De chil’n say he mighty comical, an’ he layin’ down in de baid,” she said.

Ephraim rose from his seat.

“Whar you gwine?”

“I mus’ go to see ’bout him,” he said, simply.

“Ain’ you gwine finish eatin’?”

“I gwine kyar dis to him.”

“Well, I kin cook you anurr when we come back,” said his wife, with ready acquiescence.

In a few minutes they were on the way, going single file down the path through the sassafras, along which little Eph and his followers had come an hour before, the man in the lead and his wife following, and, according to the custom of their race, carrying the bundles, one the surrendered supper and the other the neatly folded and well-patched shirt in which Ole ’Stracted hoped to meet his long-expected loved ones.

As they came in sight of the ruinous little hut which had been the old man’s abode since his sudden appearance in the neighborhood a few years after the war, they observed that the bench beside the door was deserted, and that the door stood ajar—­two circumstances which neither of them remembered ever to have seen before; for in all the years in which he had been their neighbor Ole ’Stracted had never admitted any one within his door, and had never been known to leave it open.  In mild weather he occupied a bench outside, where he either cobbled shoes for his neighbors, accepting without question anything they paid him, or else sat perfectly quiet, with the air of a person waiting for some one.  He held only the briefest communication with anybody, and was believed by some to have intimate relations with the Evil One, and his tumble-down hut, which he was particular to keep closely daubed, was thought by such as took this view of the matter to be the temple where he practiced his unholy rites.  For this reason, and because the little cabin, surrounded by dense pines and covered with vines which the popular