The land was quite gray, the river pearl-colored, and the fireflies
beginning to sparkle, when he rode through the home gates. In the dusk of
the world, out of the deeper shadow of the surrounding trees, his house
looked grimly upon him. The light had been at the side; all the front was
stark and black with shuttered windows. He rode to the back of the house
and hallooed to the slaves in the home quarter, where were lights and
noisy laughter, and one deep voice singing in an unknown tongue.
It was but a stone's throw to the nearest cabin, and Haward's call made
itself heard above the babel. The noise suddenly lessened, and two or
three negroes, starting up from the doorstep, hurried across the grass to
horse and rider. Quickly as they came, some one within the house was
beforehand with them. The door swung open; there was the flare of a
lighted candle, and a voice cried out to know what was wanted.
"Wanted!" exclaimed Haward. "Ingress into my own house is wanted! Where is
Juba?"
One of the negroes pressed forward. "Heah I is, Marse Duke! House all
ready for you, but you done sont word"-"I know,--I know," answered Haward impatiently. "I changed my mind. Is
that you, Saunderson, with the light? Or is it Hide?"
The candle moved to one side, and there was disclosed a large white face
atop of a shambling figure dressed in some coarse, dark stuff. "Neither,
sir," said an expressionless voice. "Will it please your Honor to
dismount?"
Haward swung himself out of the saddle, tossed the reins to a negro, and,
with Juba at his heels, climbed the five low stone steps and entered the
wide hall running through the house and broken only by the broad, winding
stairway. Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle all was in darkness;
the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his tread. On either hand
squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of large, empty rooms, and
down the stair came a wind that bent the weak flame. The negro took the
light from the hand of the man who had opened the door, and, pressing past
his master, lit three candles in a sconce upon the wall.
"Yo' room's all ready, Marse Duke," he declared. "Dere's candles enough,
an' de fire am laid an' yo' bed aired. Ef you wan' some supper, I kin get
you bread an' meat, an' de wine was put in yesterday."
Haward nodded, and taking the candle began to mount the stairs. Half way
up he found that the man in the sad-colored raiment was following him. He
raised his brows, but being in a taciturn humor, and having, moreover, to
shield the flame from the wind that drove down the stair, he said nothing,
going on in silence to the landing, and to the great eastward-facing room
that had been his father's, and which now he meant to make his own. There
were candles on the table, the dresser, and the mantelshelf. He lit them
all, and the room changed from a place of shadows and monstrous shapes to
a gentleman's bedchamber,--somewhat sparsely furnished, but of a
comfortable and cheerful aspect. A cloth lay upon the floor, the windows
were curtained, and the bed had fresh hangings of green and white
Kidderminster. Over the mantel hung a painting of Haward and his mother,
done when he was six years old. Beneath the laughing child and the smiling
lady, young and flower-crowned, were crossed two ancient swords. In the
middle of the room stood a heavy table, and pushed back, as though some
one had lately risen from it, was an armchair of Russian leather. Books
lay upon the table; one of them open, with a horn snuffbox keeping down
the leaf.