CHAPTER V.THE NEW HOME.
It is not our intention to follow our travellers through the various stages of their long, tiresome journey, but we will with them hasten on to the close of a mild spring afternoon, when the whole company, wearied and spiritless, drew up in front of a large, newly built log house, in the rear of which were three smaller ones. These last were for the accommodation of the negroes, who were soon scattering in every direction, in order to ascertain, as soon as possible, all the conveniences and inconveniences of their new home. It took Aunt Dillah but a short time to make up her mind that “Kentuck was an ugly-looking, out-of-the way place, the whole on’t; that she wished to gracious she’s back in old Virginny;” and lastly, that “she never should have come, no how, if marster hadn’t of ’sisted and ’sisted, till ’twasn’t in natur to ’fuse.”
This assertion Aunt Dillah repeated so frequently, that she at length came to believe it herself. The old creature had no idea that she was not the main prop of her master’s household, and we ourselves are inclined to think that Mrs. Wilder, unaided by Dillah’s strong arm, ready tact, and encouraging words, could not well have borne the hardships and privations attending that home in the wilderness. Weary and heart-sick, she stepped from the little waggon, while an expression of sadness passed over her face as her eye wandered over the surrounding country, where tract after tract of thick woodland stretched on and still onward, to the verge of the most distant horizon.
Dillah, better than any one else, understood how to cheer her mistress, and within an hour after their arrival a crackling fire was blazing in the fire-place, while the old round iron-teakettle, or rather its contents were hissing and moaning, and telling, as plainly as tea-kettle could tell, of coming good cheer. At length the venison steaks and Dillah’s short cake, smoking hot, were placed upon the old square table, and the group which shared that first supper at Glen’s Creek were, with the exception of Charlie, comparatively contented. He, poor child, missed the scenes of his early home, and more than all, he missed his playmate, Ella.
Long after the hour of midnight went by, he stood by his little low window near the head of his bed, gazing up at the hosts of shining stars, and wondering if they were looking upon his dear old home, even as they looked down upon him, home-sick and lonely, afar in the wilderness of Kentucky.