take that as meanin’ Jintsey’s boy, would you now?  It’s a mighty fine soundin’ title,’ sezee.  Gawge gave a little moanful sawt of smile, same as to say, well, aftah all, it wasn’t wuth what it cost him.  An’ it wasn’t!  No, it wasn’t,” repeated Uncle Billy, solemnly shaking the ashes from his pipe.  “What’s the good of a head full of book learnin’ with a poah puny body that kaint tote it around?”

Somehow, Uncle Billy’s solemn declaration, “he have fought a good fight,” associated this colored preacher, in John Jay’s simple little mind, with soldiers and fierce battles and a great victory.  He lay back on his pillow, wishing they would go on talking about this man who had suddenly become such a hero in his boyish eyes.  But their talk gradually drifted to the details of Mrs. Watson’s last illness.  He had heard them so many times that he soon felt his eyelids slowly closing.  Then he dozed for a few minutes, awakening with a start.  They had gotten as far as the funeral now, and were discussing the sermon.  They would soon be commenting on the way that each member of the family “took her death.”  That was so much more interesting, he thought he would just close his eyes again for a moment, until they came to that.

Their voices murmured on in a pleasing flow; his head sunk lower on the pillow, and his breathing was a little louder.  Then his hand dropped down at his side.  He was sound asleep just when Aunt Susan was about to begin one of her most thrilling ghost stories.

In the midst of an account of “a ha’nt that walked the graveyard every thirteenth Friday in the year,” John Jay turned over in his sleep with a little snort.  Aunt Susan nearly jumped out of her chair, and Uncle Billy dropped his pipe.  There was a moment of frightened silence till Mammy said, “It must have been Bud, I reckon.  John Jay is allus a-knockin’ him in his sleep an’ makin’ him holler out.  Go on, sis’ Susan.”

The moon had travelled well across the sky when Mammy’s guests said good night.  She lingered outside after they had gone, to look far down the road, where a single point of light, shining through the trees, marked the toll-gate.  It would not be so lonely for Mars’ Nat, now that George had come home.  She recalled the laughing face of the little black boy as she had known it long ago, and tried to call up in her imagination a picture of the man that Uncle Billy had described.  Visions of the old days rose before her.  As she stood there with her hands wrapped in her apron, it was not the moon-flooded night she looked into, but the warm, living daylight of a golden past.

At last, with a sigh, she turned to take the chairs into the house.  Lifting the big rocker high in front of her, she stepped over the threshold and started to shuffle her way along to the candle shelf.  The chair came down in the middle of the floor with a sudden bang, as she caught her foot in John Jay’s pillow and sprawled across him.