The children raced into the house and tore the newspaper from the table.  Under it were three cold boiled potatoes, a dish of salt, a cup of molasses, and a big pone of corn-bread.  As head of the family, John Jay divided everything but the salt exactly into thirds, and wasted no time in ceremonies before beginning.  As soon as the last crumb was finished he spread an old quilt in front of the fireplace, where the embers, though covered deep in ashes, still kept the hearth warm.

No coaxing was needed to induce Ivy to lie down.  Even if she had not been tired and sleepy she would have obeyed.  John Jay’s word was law in his grandmother’s absence.  Then he sat down on the doorstep and waited for her to go to sleep.

“If she wakes up and gets out on the road while we’re gone, won’t I catch it, though!” he exclaimed to Bud in an undertone.

“Shet the doah,” suggested Bud.

“No, she’d sut’n’ly get into some devilmint if she was shet in by herself,” he answered.

“How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!” John Jay’s roving eyes fell on a broken teacup on the window-sill, that Mammy kept as a catch-all for stray buttons and bits of twine.  He remembered having seen some rusty tacks among the odds and ends.  A loose brickbat stuck up suggestively from the sunken hearth.  The idea had not much sooner popped into his head than the deed was done.  Bending over breathlessly to make sure that the unsuspecting Ivy was asleep, he nailed her little pink dress to the floor with a row of rusty tacks.  Then cautiously replacing the bit of broken brick, he made for the door, upsetting Bud in his hasty leave-taking.

Over in the briar-patch, out of sight of the house, two happy little darkeys played all the afternoon.  They beat the ground with the stout clubs they carried.  They pried up logs in search of snakes.  They whooped, they sang, they whistled.  They rolled over and over each other, giggling as they wrestled, in the sheer delight of being alive on such a day.  When they finally killed a harmless little chicken-snake, no prince of the royal blood, hunting tigers in Indian jungles, could have been prouder of his striped trophies than they were of theirs.

Meanwhile Ivy slept peacefully on, one little hand sticking to her plump, molasses-smeared cheek, the other holding fast to her headless doll.  Beside her on the floor lay a tattered picture-book, a big bottle half full of red shelled corn, and John Jay’s most precious treasure, a toy watch that could be endlessly wound up.  He had heaped them all beside her, hoping they would keep her occupied until his return, in case she should waken earlier than usual.

The sun was well on its way to bed when the little hunters shouldered their clubs, with a snake dangling from each one, and started for the cabin.

“My!  I didn’t know it was so late!” exclaimed John Jay ruefully, as they met a long procession of home-going cows.  “Ain’t it funny how soon sundown gets heah when yo’ havin’ a good time, and how long it is a-comin’ when yo’ isn’t!”