“I like Blossom better,” she answered shyly, lifting her scant calico skirt with one hand as she mounted the stile.

“Then good night, lovely Blossom,” he called gaily while he turned back into the bridle path which led like a frayed white seam over the pasture.

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH MR. GAY ARRIVES AT HIS JOURNEY’S END

Broad and low, with the gabled pediment of the porch showing through boughs of oaks, and a flight of bats wheeling over the ivied roof, the house appeared to Gay beyond a slight swell in the meadows.  The grove of oaks, changing from dark red to russet, was divided by a short walk, bordered by clipped box, which led to the stone steps and to two discoloured marble urns on which broken-nosed Cupids were sporting.  As he was about to slip his reins over the back of an iron chair on the lawn, a shriek in a high pitched negro voice pierced his ears from a half shuttered dormer-window in the east wing.

“Fo’ de Lawd, hit’s de ha’nt er ole marster!  Yessuh—­Yessuh,—­I’se a-comin’—­I’se a-comin’.”

The next instant the window slammed with a bang, and the sound of flying footsteps echoed through the darkened interior of the house.

“Open the door, you fool!  I’m not a ghost!” shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight.  There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed a sinister and inhospitable look against the background of oaks.  His mother and his aunt, he concluded, were doubtless away for their winter’s shopping, so lifting his horse’s head from the grass, he passed between the marble urns and the clipped box, and followed a path, deep in leaves, which led from the west wing of the house to the outside kitchen beyond a paved square at the back.  Half intelligible words floated to him as he approached, and from an old pear-tree near the door there was a flutter of wings where a brood of white turkeys settled to roost.  Beyond the bole of the tree a small negro in short skirts was “shooin’” a large rooster into the henhouse, but at the muffled fall of Gay’s horse’s hoofs on the dead leaves, she turned with a choking sound, and fled to the shelter of the kitchen at her back.

“My time’s done come, but I ain’t-a-gwine!  I ain’t-a-gwine!” wailed the chorus within.  “Ole marster’s done come ter fotch me, but I ain’t-a-gwine!  O Lawd, I ain’t-a-gwine!  O Jesus, I ain’t-a-gwine!”

“You fools, hold your tongues!” stormed the young man, losing his temper.  “Send somebody out here to take my horse or I’ll give you something to shout over in earnest.”

The shrieks trembled high for an instant, and then died out in a despairing moan, while the blanched face of an old servant appeared in the doorway.