The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened.  “Is you from the South, suh?  I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me.  They is somethin’ sharp in the toes for a Southern gen’l’man to wear.”

“Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?” said I inexorably.

His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished.

“Boss,” he said, “fifty cents is right; but I needs two dollars, suh; I’m obleeged to have two dollars.  I ain’t demandin’ it now, suh; after I know whar you’s from; I’m jus’ sayin’ that I has to have two dollars to-night, and business is mighty po’.”

Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features.  He had been luckier than he had hoped.  Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance.

“You confounded old rascal,” I said, reaching down to my pocket, “you ought to be turned over to the police.”

For the first time I saw him smile.  He knew; he knew.  HE KNEW.

I gave him two one-dollar bills.  As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times.  Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again.  A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability.

Enough of the African bandit for the present:  I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened a creaky gate.

The house, as I said, was a shell.  A paint brush had not touched it in twenty years.  I could not see why a strong wind should not have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that hugged it close—­the trees that saw the battle of Nashville and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold.

Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen’s, received me.

The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs.  Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies.  I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket but they were not there.

Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be repeated to you.  She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life.  Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope.  She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration.  Of such is the precious, small group of essayists made.  While she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood.  She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery.  Nearly everybody nowadays knows too much—­oh, so much too much—­of real life.