‘Yer full o’ mother love,’ said her husband, as he sat down on the grass a moment ‘Lost her only baby, an’ the good Lord has sent no other.  I swan, he has got putty eyes.  Jes’ as blue as a May flower.  Ain’t ye hungry?  Come right in, both o’ ye, an’ set down t’ the table with us.’

They made room for us and we sat down between the bare elbows of the hired men.  I remember my eyes came only to the top of the table.  So the good woman brought the family Bible and sitting on that firm foundation I ate my dinner of salt pork and potatoes and milk gravy a diet as grateful as it was familiar to my taste.

‘Orphan, eh?’ said the man of the house, looking down at me.

‘Orphan,’ Uncle Eb answered, nodding his head.

‘God-fearin’ folks?’

‘Best in the world,’ said Uncle Eb.

Want t’ bind ‘im out?’ the man asked.

’Couldn’t spare ‘im,’ said Uncle Eb, decisively.

‘Where ye goin’?’

Uncle Eb hesitated, groping for an answer, I suppose, that would do no violence to our mutual understanding.

‘Goin’ t’ heaven,’ I ventured to say presently — an answer that gave rise to conflicting emotions at the table.

‘That’s right,’ said Uncle Eb, turning to me and patting my head.  ‘We’re on the road t’ heaven, I hope, an’ ye’ll see it someday, sartin sure, if ye keep in the straight road and be a good boy.’

After dinner the good woman took off my clothes and put me in bed while she mended them.  I went asleep then and did not awake for a long time.  When I got up at last she brought a big basin of water and washed me with such motherly tenderness in voice and manner that I have never forgotten it.  Uncle Eb lay sleeping on the lounge and when she had finished dressing me, Fred and I went out to play in the garden.  It was supper time in a little while and then, again, the woman winded the shell and the men came up from the field.  We sat down to eat with them, as we had done at noon, and Uncle Eb consented to spend the night after some urging.  He helped them with the milking, and as I stood beside him shot a jet of the warm white flood into my mouth, that tickled it so I ran away laughing.  The milking done, I sat on Uncle Eb’s knee in the door-yard with all the rest of that household, hearing many tales of the wilderness, and of robbery and murder on Paradise Road.  I got the impression that it was a country of unexampled wickedness and ferocity in men and animals.  One man told about the ghost of Burnt Bridge; how the bridge had burnt one afternoon and how a certain traveller in the dark of the night driving down the hill above it, fell to his death at the brink of the culvert.

‘An’ every night since then,’ said the man, very positively, ye can hear him drivin’ down thet bill — jes’ as plain as ye can hear me talkin’ — the rattle o’ the wheels an’ all.  It stops sudden an’ then ye can hear ‘im hit the rocks way down there at the bottom O’ the gulley an’ groan an’ groan.  An’ folks say it’s a curse on the town for leavin’ thet hole open.’