“Mary and Martha in deep distress,
  A-grievin’ ovah brer Laz’rus’ death.”

It gave him such a creepy sort of feeling that he stuck his fingers in his ears to shut out the sound.  Thus barricaded, he did not hear slow footsteps shuffling up the path; but presently the powerful fumes of a rank pipe told of an approaching visitor.  He took his fingers from his ears and sat up.

Uncle Billy and Aunt Susan had come over to gossip a while.  Mammy groped her way into the house to drag out the wooden rocker for her sister-in-law, while Uncle Billy tilted himself back against the cabin in a straight splint-bottomed chair.  The usual opening remarks about the state of the family health, the weather, and the crops were of very little interest to John Jay; indeed he nearly fell asleep while Aunt Susan was giving a detailed account of the way she cured the misery in her side.  However, as soon as they began to discuss neighborhood happenings, he was all attention.

The more interested he grew, it seemed to him, the lower they pitched their voices.  Creeping carefully across the floor, he curled up on his pillow just inside the doorway, where the shadows fell heaviest, and where he could enjoy every word of the conversation, without straining his ears to listen.

“Gawge Chadwick came home yestiddy,” announced Uncle Billy.

“Sho now!” exclaimed Mammy.  “Not lame Jintsey’s boy!  You don’t mean it!”

“That’s the ve’y one,” persisted Uncle Billy.  “Gawge Washington Chadwick.  He’s a ministah of the gospel now, home from college with a Rev’und befo’ his name, an’ a long-tailed black coat on.  He doesn’t look much like the little pickaninny that b’long to Mars’ Nat back in wah times.”

“And Jintsey’s dead, poah thing!” exclaimed Aunt Susan.  “What a day it would have been for her, if she could have lived to see her boy in the pulpit!”

Conversation never kept on a straight road when these three were together.  It was continually turning back by countless by-paths to the old slavery days.  The rule of their master, Nat Chadwick, had been an easy one.  There had always been plenty in the smoke-house and contentment in the quarters.  These simple old souls, while rejoicing in their freedom, often looked tenderly back to the flesh-pots of their early Egypt.

John Jay had heard these reminiscences dozens of times.  He knew just what was coming next, when Uncle Billy began telling about the day that young Mars’ Nat was christened.  Mis’ Alice gave a silver cup to Jintsey’s baby, George Washington, because he was born on the same day as his little Mars’ Nat.  John Jay knew the whole family history.  He was very proud of these people of gentle birth and breeding, whom Sheba spoke of as “ou’ family.”  One by one they had been carried to the little Episcopal churchyard on the hill, until only one remained.  The great estate had passed into the hands of strangers.  Only to Billy and Susan and Sheba, faithful even unto death, was it still surrounded by the halo of its old-time grandeur.