“Ain’t you goin’ to ask a blessin’, father!” said Sarah.

And the old man bent his head and mumbled.

All through the meal he stopped eating at intervals, and stared furtively at his wife; but he ate well.  The home food tasted good to him, and his old frame was too sturdily healthy to be affected by his mind.  But after supper he went out, and sat down on the step of the smaller door at the right of the barn, through which he had meant his Jerseys to pass in stately file, but which Sarah designed for her front house door, and he leaned his head on his hands.

After the supper dishes were cleared away and the milk-pans washed, Sarah went out to him.  The twilight was deepening.  There was a clear green glow in the sky.  Before them stretched the smooth level of field; in the distance was a cluster of hay-stacks like the huts of a village; the air was very cool and calm and sweet.  The landscape might have been an ideal one of peace.

Sarah bent over and touched her husband on one of his thin, sinewy shoulders.  “Father!”

The old man’s shoulders heaved:  he was weeping.

“Why, don’t do so, father,” said Sarah.

“I’ll—­put up the—­partitions, an’—­everything you—­want, mother.”

Sarah put her apron up to her face; she was overcome by her own triumph.

Adoniram was like a fortress whose walls had no active resistance, and went down the instant the right besieging tools were used.  “Why, mother,” he said, hoarsely, “I hadn’t no idee you was so set on’t as all this comes to.”

MARSE CHAN

A TALE OF OLD VIRGINIA

BY

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

Here plot, character, and setting are happily blended.  The story is sufficient to move smoothly and interestingly; the characters, both black and white, reveal the Southerner at his best; and the setting not only furnishes an appropriate background for plot and characters, but is significant of the leisure, the isolation, and the pride of the people.

MARSE CHAN

[Footnote:  From “In Ole Virginia,” by Thomas Nelson Page.  Copyright, 1887, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.]

One afternoon, in the autumn of 1872, I was riding leisurely down the sandy road that winds along the top of the water-shed between two of the smaller rivers of eastern Virginia.  The road I was travelling, following “the ridge” for miles, had just struck me as most significant of the character of the race whose only avenue of communication with the outside world it had formerly been.  Their once splendid mansions, now fast falling to decay, appeared to view from time to time, set back far from the road, in proud seclusion, among groves of oak and hickory, now scarlet and gold with the early frost.  Distance was nothing to this people, time was of no consequence to them.  They desired but a level path in life, and that they had, though the way was longer, and the outer world strode by them as they dreamed.