“Is hit you er yo’ ha’nt, Marse Jonathan?” he inquired humbly.

“Come here, you doddering idiot, and take my horse.”

But half reassured the negro came a step or two forward, and made a feeble clutch at the reins, which dropped from his grasp when the roosting turkeys stirred uneasily on the bough above.

“I’se de butler, marster, en I ain never sot foot in de stable sence de days er ole miss.”

“Where’s my mother?”

“Miss Angela, she’s done gone up ter town en Miss Kesiah she’s done gone erlong wid ’er.”

“Is the house closed?”

“Naw, suh, hit ain closed, but Miss Molly she’s got de keys up yonder at de house er de overseer.”

“Well, send somebody with a grain of sense out here, and I’ll look up Miss Molly.”

At this the butler vanished promptly into the kitchen, and a minute later a half-grown mulatto boy relieved Gay of his horse, while he pointed to a path through an old apple orchard that led to the cottage of the overseer.  As the young man passed under the gnarled boughs to a short flagged walk before the small, whitewashed house in which “Miss Molly” lived, he wondered idly if the lady who kept the keys would prove to be the amazing little person he had seen some hours earlier perched on the load of fodder in the ox-cart.  The question was settled almost before it was asked, for a band of lamplight streamed suddenly from the door of the cottage, and in the centre of it appeared the figure of a girl in a white dress, with red stockings showing under her short skirts, and a red ribbon filleting the thick brown curls on her forehead.  From her movements he judged that she was mixing a bowl of soft food for the old hound at her feet, and he waited until she had called the dog inside for his supper, before he went forward and spoke her name in his pleasant voice.

At the sound she turned with a start, and he saw her vivid little face, with the wonderful eyes, go white for a minute.

“So you are Mr. Jonathan?  I thought so,” she said at last, “but grandfather told me you sent no word of your coming.”

She spoke quickly, with a refinement of accent which puzzled him until he remembered the malicious hints Solomon Hatch had let fall at the tavern.  That she was, in reality, of his blood and the child of his uncle, he had not doubted since the moment she had smiled at him from her seat on the oxcart.  How much was known, he now wondered.  Had his uncle provided for her?  Was his mother—­was his Aunt Kesiah—­aware of the truth?

“She missed my letter, I suppose,” he replied.  “Has she been long away?”

“Only a week.  She is expected home day after to-morrow.”

“Then I shall beg you to open the house for me.”