Saturday dawned cool and clear. She had dinner prepared for cooking in the yard: sweet potatoes, hoe-cake, and buttermilk, and a hog to be barbecued. Everything was ready by eight o'clock in the morning. Emma and two other girl helpers were on the tip-toe of expectancy. Nine o'clock came and no one with it. Ten o'clock came, and eleven. High noon found Zora peering down the highway under her shading hand, but no soul in sight. She tried to think it out: what could have happened? Her people were slow, tardy, but they would not thus forget her and disappoint her without some great cause. She sent the girls home at dusk and then seated herself miserably under the great oak; then at last one half-grown boy hurried by.
"I wanted to come, Miss Zora, but I was afeared. Preacher Jones has been talking everywhere against you. He says that your mother was a voodoo woman and that you don't believe in God, and the deacons voted that the members mustn't help you."
"And do the people believe that?" she asked in consternation.
"They just don't know what to say. They don't 'zactly believe it, but they has to 'low that you didn't say much 'bout religion when you talked. You ain't been near Big Meetin'--and--and--you ain't saved." He hurried on.
Zora leaned her head back wearily, watching the laced black branches where the star-light flickered through--as coldly still and immovable as she had watched them from those gnarled roots all her life--and she murmured bitterly the world-old question of despair: "What's the use?" It seemed to her that every breeze and branch was instinct with sympathy, and murmuring, "What's the use?" She wondered vaguely why, and as she wondered, she knew.
For yonder where the black earth of the swamp heaved in a formless mound she felt the black arms of Elspeth rising from the sod--gigantic, mighty. They stole toward her with stealthy hands and claw-like talons. They clutched at her skirts. She froze and could not move. Down, down she slipped toward the black slime of the swamp, and the air about was horror--down, down, till the chilly waters stung her knees; and then with one grip she seized the oak, while the great hand of Elspeth twisted and tore her soul. Faint, afar, nearer and nearer and ever mightier, rose a song of mystic melody. She heard its human voice and sought to cry aloud. She strove again and again with that gripping, twisting pain--that awful hand--until the shriek came and she awoke.
She lay panting and sweating across the bent and broken roots of the oak. The hand of Elspeth was gone but the song was still there. She rose trembling and listened. It was the singing of the Big Meeting in the church far away. She had forgotten this religious revival in her days of hurried preparation, and the preacher had used her absence and apparent indifference against her and her work. The hand of Elspeth was reaching from the grave to pull her back; but she was no longer dreaming now. Drawing her shawl about her, she hurried down the highway.