‘Looks a good deal like the promised land,’ said Uncle Eb.  ’Hain’t got much further t’ go.’

He sat on the rotting threshold while I pulled some of the weeds in front of the doorstep and brought kindlings out of the house and built a fire.  While we were eating I told Uncle Eb of the man that I had seen in the night.

‘Guess you was dreamin’,’ he said, and, while I stood firm for the reality of that I had seen, it held our thought only for a brief moment.  My companion was unable to walk that day so we lay by, in the shelter of the old house, eating as little of our scanty store as we could do with.  I went to a spring near by for water and picked a good mess of blackberries that I hid away until supper time, so as to surprise Uncle Eb.  A longer day than that we spent in the old house, after our coming, I have never known.  I made the room a bit tidier and gathered more grass for bedding.  Uncle Eb felt better as the day grew warm.  I had a busy time of it that morning bathing his back in the spirits and rubbing until my small arms ached.  I have heard him tell often how vigorously I worked that day and how I would say:  ‘I’ll take care o’ you, Uncle Eb -won’t I, Uncle Eb?’ as my little hands flew with redoubled energy on his bare skin.  That finished we lay down sleeping until the sun was low, when I made ready the supper that took the last of everything we had to eat.  Uncle Eb was more like himself that evening and, sitting up in the corner, as the darkness came, told me the story of Squirreltown and Frog Ferry, which came to be so great a standby in those days that, even now, I can recall much of the language in which he told it.

‘Once,’ he said, ’there was a boy thet hed two grey squirrels in a cage.  They kep’ thinkin’ o’ the time they used t’ scamper in the tree-tops an’ make nests an’ eat all the nuts they wanted an’ play I spy in the thick leaves.  An they grew poor an’ looked kind o’ ragged an’ sickly an’ downhearted.  When he brought ’em outdoors they used t’ look up in the trees an’ run in the wire wheel as if they thought they could get there sometime if they kep’ goin’.  As the boy grew older he see it was cruel to keep ’em shet in a cage, but he’d hed em a long time an’ couldn’t bear t’ give ’em up.

‘One day he was out in the woods a little back o’ the clearin’.  All t’ once he heard a swift holler.  ‘Twas nearby an’ echoed so he couldn’t tell which way it come from.  He run fer home but the critter ketched ‘im before he got out o’ the woods an’ took ’im into a cave, an’ give ‘im t’ the little swifts t’ play with.  The boy cried terrible.  The swifts they laughed an’ nudged each other.

’"O ain’t he cute!” says one.  “He’s a beauty!” says another.  “Cur’us how he can git along without any fur,” says the mother swift, as she run er nose over ’is bare foot.  He thought of ‘is folks waitin’ fer him an’ he begged em t’ let ‘im go.  Then they come an’ smelt ’im over.