"There it is again," he cried out. "Every way I turn it's the same thing. I can't even chuck nothin' overboard but I hear it."
"Hear what?" The keen anguish expressed in his voice had alarmed me.
"That song-sparrow—did ye hear it? I tell ye this thing'll drive me crazy. I tell ye I can't stand it—I can't stand it." And he turned his head and covered his face with his sleeve.
The outburst and gesture only intensified my anxiety. Was Jim's mind giving away? I arose from my seat and bent over him, my hand on his arm.
"Why, that's only a bird, Jim—I saw it—it's gone into the bushes."
"Yes, I know it; I seen it; that's what hurts me; that's what's allus goin' to hurt me. And 'tain't only goin' to be the birds. It's goin' to be the trees and the gray-backs and the trout we catched, and everywhere I look and every place I go to it's goin' to be the same thing. And it ain't never goin' to be no better—never—never—long as I live. She said so. Them was her very words I ain't never goin' to forgit 'em." And he leaned his head in a baffled, tired way against the planking of the mill.
"Who said so, Jim?" I asked.
Jim raised his head, looked me straight in the face and, with the tears starting in his eyes, answered in a low voice:
"Ruby. She loves 'em—loves every one o' 'em. Oh, what's goin' to become o' me now, anyhow?"
"Well, but I don't—" The revelation came to me before I could complete the sentence. Jim's face had told the story of his heart!
"Jim," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder, "do you love Ruby?"
"Sit down here," he said, in a hopeless, despondent voice, "and mebbe I'll git grit enough to tell ye. I ain't never told none o' the folks that comes up here o' how things was, but I'm goin' to tell you. And I'm goin' to tell it to ye plumb from the beginnin'. too." And a sigh like the moan of one in pain escaped him.
"Twelve years ago I come here from New York. I'd been cleaned out o' everything I had by a man I trusted, and I was flat broke. I didn't care where I went, so's I got away from the city and from people. I wanted to git somewheres out into the country, and so I got aboard the train and kep' on till I'd struck Plymouth. There my money gin out and I started up the road into the mountains. I thought I'd hire out to some choppers for the winter. When night come I see a light and knocked at the door and Jed opened it. He warn't goin' to keep me, but he was a-buildin' the shed where the old mare is now, and he found out I was handy with the tools and didn't want no wages, only my board, so he let me stay. The next spring he hired me regular and give me wages every month. I kep' along, choppin' in the winter and helpin' 'round the place, and in summer goin' out with the parties that come up from the city, helpin.' 'em fish and hunt. I liked that, for I loved the woods ever since I was a boy, when I used to go off by myself and stay days and nights with nothin' but a tin can o' grub and a blanket. That's why I come here when I went broke.
"One summer there come a feller from Boston to fish. He brought his wife along, and T used to go out with both o' 'em. The man's wife was puttin' up for some o' them children's homes, and she used to talk to Marm Marvin about takin' one o' the children and what a comfort it would be to the child to git out into the fresh air, and one mornin' 'fore she left she took Jed down in the woods and talked to him, and the week after she left for home Marm Marvin sent me over to the station—same place I fetched ye—and out she got with a tag sewed on her jacket and her name on it, and a bundle o' clothes no bigger'n your head. She was 'bout seven or eight years old, and the cunnin'est young un ye ever see. Jus' the same eyes she's got now, only they looked bigger, 'cause her cheeks was caved in."
"Not Ruby, Jim!" I cried, in astonishment.
"Yes, Ruby. That's what was on the tag."
"And she isn't Marvin's child?"
"No more'n she's yourn, nor mine. She ain't nobody's child that anybody knows about. She's jus' Ruby, and that's all there is to her.
"Well, by the time I'd got her out to the farm and had heared her talk and seen her clap her hands at the chippies, and laugh at the birds, and go half wild over every little thing she'd see, I knowed I'd got hold o' something that filled up every crack o' my heart. And she didn't come a day too soon, for Jed had got so ugly there warn't no livin' with him, and I'd made up my mind to quit, and I would if he hadn't took a streak ag'in Ruby at the start. Then I knowed where my trail led. And arter that I never let her out o' my sight. Marm Marvin was different. She never had no child o' her own, and she warmed up to Ruby more'n more every day, and she loves her now much as she kin love anything.
"That fust winter we had a good deal o' snow and I made a pair o' leggins for her out o' a deer's skin I'd killed, and rigged up a sled, and I'd haul her after me wherever I went, and when school opened down to the cross-roads I'd haul her down and bring her back if the snow warn't too deep, and when summer come she'd go 'long jus' the same. I taught her to fish and shoot, and often she'd stay out in camp with me all night when I was tendin' the sugar-maples—she sleepin' on the balsams with my coat throwed over her.
"Things went on this way till 'bout three years ago, when I see she warn't gittin' ahead fast as she could, and I went for the old man to send her to school down to Plymouth. Marm Marvin was willin', but Jed held out, and at last he give in after my talkin' to him. So I hooked up the buck-board and drove her down to Plymouth and left her, with her arms 'round my neck and the tears streamin' down her face. But she was game all the same, only she hated to have me leave her.
"Every July and Christmas I'd go for her, and she'd allus be waitin' for me at the head o' the stairs or would come runnin' down with her arms wide open, and she'd kiss me and hug me and call me dear Uncle Jim, and tell me how she loved me, and how there warn't nothin' in the world she loved so much; and then when she'd git home we'd tramp the woods together every chance we got."
Jim stopped and bent forward, his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees. For a time he was silent; then he went on:
"This last time when I went for her she pretty nigh took my breath away. She seemed just as glad to see me, but she didn't git into my arms as she ueeter, and she looked different, too. She had growed every way bigger, and wider, and older. I kep' a-lookin' at her, tryin' to find the little girl I'd left some months afore, but she warn't there. She acted different, too—more quiet like and still, so that I was feared to touch her like I useter, and took it out in talkin' to her and listenin' to all she told me o' what she was larnin' and how this winter she was goin' to git through and git her certificate, and then she was goin' to teach and help her mother—she allus called Marm Marvin mother. Then she told me o' how one o' the teachers—a young fellow from a college—was goin' to set up a school o' his own and goin' to git some o' the graduates to help teach when he got started, and how he had asked her to be one o' 'em, and how she was goin' with him.
"Since you been here and us three been together and I begun to see how happy she was a-talkin' to you and askin' you questions, I got worse'n ever over her. I begun to see that I warn't what I had been to her. When we was trampin' and fishin' it was all right and she'd talk to me 'bout the ways o' the birds and what flowers come up fust and all that, but when it got to geography and history I warn't in it with her, and you was. That sickened me more'n ever. Pretty soon I began to feel as if everything I had in life war slippin' away from me. I didn't want her to shut me out from anything she had. I wanted to have half, same's we allus had—half for me and half for her. Why, lately, when I lay awake nights a-thinkin' it over, I've wished sometimes that she hadn't growed up at all, and that she'd allus be my baby-girl and I her Uncle Jim.
"Yesterday mornin'—" Jim's voice broke, and he cleared his throat. "Yesterday mornin' we went down the branch, as ye know, and she was a-settin' on a log throwin' her fly into the pool, when one o' them song-sparrows lit on a bush and looked at her, and begin to sing like he'd bust his little chest, and she sung back at him with her eyes a-laughin' and her hair a-flyin', and I stood lookin' at her and my heart choked up in my throat, and I leaned over and took the rod out o' her hand.
"'Baby-girl,' I says, 'there ain't a bird 'round here that ain't got a mate; and that's what makes 'em so happy. I ain't got nobody but you, Ruby—don't go 'way from me, child—stay with me.' And I told her. She looked at me startled like, same as a deer does when he hears a dog bark; then she jumped up and begin to cry.
"'Oh, Jim—Jim—dear Jim!' she says. 'I love you so, and you've been so good to me all my life, but don't—don't never say that to me again. That can never be—not so long as we live.' And she dropped down on the ground and cried till she couldn't git her breath. Then she got up and kissed my hands and went home, leavin' me there alone feelin' like I'd fell off a scaffoldin' and struck the sidewalk."
Jim arose from his seat and began pacing the platform again. I had not spoken a word through his long story.
"Jim," I began, "how old are you?"
"Forty-two," he said, in a patient, listless way.
"More than twice as old as Ruby, aren't you? Old enough, really, to be her father. You love her, don't you—love her for herself—not yourself? You wouldn't let anything hurt her if you could help it. You were right when you said every bird has its mate. That's true, Jim, and the way it ought to be—but they mate withthisyear's birds, notlastyear's. When men get as old as you and I we forget these things sometimes, but they are true all the same."
"I know it," he broke out, "I know it; you can't tell me nothin' about it. I thought it all over more'n a hundred times lately. I could bite my tongue off for sayin' what I did to her, and spilin' her visit, but it's done now and I can't help it, and I've got to stay here and bear it."
"No, Jim, don't stay here. So long as she sees you around here she'll be unhappy, and you will be equally miserable. Go away from here; find work somewhere else."
"When?" he said, quietly.
"Now; right away; before she comes back at Christmas."
"No, I can't do it, and I won't. Not till she graduates and gits her certificate. That'll be next June."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Got a good deal to do with it. If I should leave now jes's winter's comin' on I mightn't git another job, and she'd have to come home and her eddication be sp'ilt."
"What would bring her home?" I asked in surprise.
"What would bring her home?" he repeated, with some irritation. "Why they'd send her if the bills warn't paid—that's what Marm Marvin couldn't help her, and Jed wouldn't give her a cent. Them school-bills, you know, I've always paid out o' my wages—that's why Jed let her go. No; I'll stick it out here till she finishes, if it kills me. Baby-girl sha'n't miss nothin' through me."
One beautiful spring day I swung back the gate of a garden on the outskirts of the village of Plymouth and walked up a flower-bordered path to a cottage porch smothered in vines.
Ruby was standing in the door, her hands held out to me. I had not seen her for years. Her husband had not returned yet from their school, but she expected him every minute.
"And dear old Jim?" I asked. "What has become of him?"
"Look," she said, pointing to a shambling, awkward figure stooping under the apple-trees, which were in full bloom. "There he is, picking blossoms with little Ruby. He never leaves her for a minute."
He was looking through a hole—a square hole, framed about with mahogany and ground glass. His face was red, his eyes were black, his mustache—waxed to two needle-points—was a yellowish brown; his necktie blue and his uniform dark chocolate seamed with little threads of vermilion and incrusted with silver poker-chip buttons emblazoned with the initials of the corporation which he served.
I knew I was all right when I read the initials. I had found the place and the man. The place was the ticket-office of the International Sleeping-Car Company. The man was its agent.
So I said, very politely and in my best French—it is a little frayed and worn at the edges, but it arrives—sometimes——
"A lower for Paris."
The man in chocolate, with touches of the three primary colors distributed over his person, half-closed his eyes, lifted his shoulders in a tired way, loosened his fingers, and, without changing the lay-figure expression of his face, replied:
"There is nothing."
"Not a berth?"
"Not a berth."
"Are they allpaidfor?" and I accented the wordpaid. I spend countless nights on Pullmans in my own country and am familiar with many uncanny devices.
"All but one."
"Why can't I have it? It is within an hour of train-time. Who ordered it?"
"The Director of the great circus. He is here now waiting for his troupe, which arrives from Berlin in a special car belonging to our company. The other car—the one that starts from here—is full. We have only two cars on this train—Monsieur the Director has the last berth."
He said this, of course, in his native language. I am merely translating it. I would give it to you in the original, but it might embarrass you; it certainly would me.
"What's the matter with putting the Circus Director in the special car? Your regulations say berths must be paid for one hour before train-time. It is now fifty-five minutes of eight. Your train goes at eight, doesn't it? Here is a twenty-franc gold piece—never mind the change"—and I flung a napoleon on the desk before him.
The bunch of fingers disentangled themselves, the shoulders sank an inch, the waxed ends of the taffy-colored mustache vibrated slightly, and a smile widened in circles across the flat dulness of his face until it engulfed his eyebrows, ears, and chin. The effect of the dropping of the coin had been like the dropping of a stone into the still smoothness of a pool—the wrinkling wavelets had reached the uttermost shore-line.
The smile over, he opened a book about the size of an atlas, dipped a pen in an inkstand, recorded my point of departure—Cologne, and my point of arrival—Paris; dried the inscription with a pinch of black sand filched from a saucer—same old black sand used in the last century—cut a section of the page with a pair of shears, tossed the coin in the air, listened to its ring on the desk with a satisfied look, slipped the whole twenty-franc piece into his pocket—regular fare, fifteen francs, irregular swindle, five francs—and handed me the billet. Then he added, with a trace of humor in his voice:
"If Monsieur the Director of the Circus comes now he will go in the special car."
I examined the billet. I had Compartment Number Four, upper berth, Car 312.
I lighted a cigarette, gave my small luggage-checks to a porter with directions to deposit my traps in my berth when the train was ready—the company's office was in the depot—and strolled out to look at the station.
You know the Cologne station, of course. It is as big as the Coliseum, shaped like an old-fashioned hoop-skirt with a petticoat of glass, and connects with one of the most beautiful bridges in the world. It has two immense waiting-rooms, with historical frescos on the walls and two huge fireplaces supported on nudities shivering with the cold, for no stick of wood ever blazes on the well-swept hearths. It has also a gorgeous restaurant, with panelled ceiling, across which skip bunches of butterfly Cupids in shameless costumes, and an inviting cafe with never-dying palms in the windows, a portrait of the Kaiser over the counter holding the coffee-urn, and a portrait of the Kaiserin over the counter holding the little sticky cakes, the baby bottles of champagne, and the long lady-finger sandwiches with bits of red ham hanging from their open ends like poodle-dogs' tongues.
Outside these ponderous rooms, under the arching glass of the station itself, is a broad platform protected from rushing trains and yard engines by a wrought-iron fence, twisted into most enchanting scrolls and pierced down its whole length by sliding wickets, before which stand be-capped and be-buttoned officials of the road. It is part of the duty of these gatemen never to let you through these wickets until the arrival of the last possible moment compatible with the boarding of your car.
So if you are wise—that is, if you have been left behind several times depending on the watchfulness of these Cerberi and their promises to let you know when your train is ready—you hang about this gate and keep an eye out as to what is going on. I had been two nights on the sleeper through from Warsaw and beyond, and could take no chances.
Then again, I wanted to watch the people coming and going—it is a habit of mine; nothing gives me greater pleasure. It has made me an expert in judging human nature. I flatter myself that I can tell the moment I set my eyes on a man just what manner of life he leads, what language he speaks, whether he be rich or poor, educated or ignorant. I can do all this before he opens his mouth. I have never been proud of this faculty. I have regarded it more as a gift, as I would an acute sense of color, or a correct eye for drawing, or the ability to acquire a language quickly. I was born that way, I suppose.
The first man to approach the wicket was the Director of the Circus. I knew him at once. There was no question as tohisidentity. He wore a fifty-candle-power stone in his shirt-front, a silk hat that shone like a new hansom cab, and a Prince Albert coat that came below his knees. He had taken off his ring boots, of course, and was without his whip, but otherwise he was completely equipped to raise his hat and say: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the world-renowned," etc., etc., "will now perform the blood-curdling act of," etc.
He was attended by a servant, was smooth-shaven, had an Oriental complexion as yellow as the back of an old law-book, black, jet-black eyes, and jet-black hair.
I listened for some outbreak, some explosion about his bed having been sold from under him, some protest about the rights of a citizen. None came. The gateman merely touched his hat, slid back the gate, and the Director of the Greatest Show on Earth, smiling haughtily, passed in, crossed the platform and stepped into awagon-litstanding on the next track to me labelled "Paris 312," and left me behind. The gateman had had free tickets, of course, or would have, for himself and family whenever the troupe should be in Cologne. There was no doubt of it—I saw it in the smile that permeated his face and the bow that bent his back as the man passed him. This kind of petty bribery is, of course, abominable, and should never be countenanced.
Some members of the troupe came next. The gentleman in chocolate with my five francs in his pocket did not mention the name of any other member of the troupe except the Director, but it was impossible for me to be mistaken about these people—I have seen too many of them.
She was rather an imposing-looking woman—not young, not old—dressed in a long travelling-cloak trimmed with fur (how well we know these night-cloaks of the professional!), and was holding by a short leash an enormous Danish hound; one of those great hulking hounds—a hound whose shoulders shake when he walks, with white, blinky eyes, smooth skin, and mottled spots—brown and gray—spattered along his back and ribs. Trick dog, evidently—one who springs at the throat of the assassin (the assassin has a thin slice of sausage tucked inside his collar-button), pulls him to the earth, and sucks his life's blood or chews his throat. She, too, went through with a sweep—the dog beside her, followed by a maid carrying two band-boxes, a fur boa, and a bunch of parasols closely furled and tied with a ribbon. I braced up, threw out my shoulders, and walked boldly up to the wicket. The be-buttoned and be-capped man looked at me coldly, waved me away with his hand, and said "Nein."
Now, when a man of intelligence, speaking the language of the country, backed by the police, the gendarmerie, and the Imperial Army, says "Nein" to me, if I am away from home I generally bow to the will of the people.
So I waited.
Then I heard the low rumble of a train and a short high-keyed shriek—we used to make just such shrieking sounds by blowing into keys when we were boys. The St. Petersburg express was approaching end foremost—the train with the special sleeping-car holding the balance of the circus troupe. The next moment it bumped gently into Car No. 312, holding the Director (I wondered whether he had my berth), the woman with the dog, and her maid.
The gateman paused until the train came to a dead standstill, waited until the last arriving passenger had passed through an exit lower down along the fence, slid back the gate, and I walked through—alone! Not another passenger either before or behind me! And the chocolate gentleman told me the car was full! The fraud!
When I reached the steps of Car No. 312 I found a second gentleman in chocolate and poker-chip buttons. He was scrutinizing a list of sold and unsold compartments by the aid of a conductor's lantern braceleted on his elbow. He turned the glare of his lantern on my ticket, entered the car and preceded me down its narrow aisle and slid back the door of Number Four. I stepped and discovered, to my relief, my small luggage, hat-box, shawl, and umbrella, safely deposited in the upper berth. My night's rest, at all events, was assured.
I found also a bald-headed passenger, who was standing with his back to me stowing his small luggage into the lower berth. He looked at me over his shoulder for a moment, moved his bag so that I could pass, and went on with his work. My sharing his compartment had evidently produced an unpleasant impression.
I slipped off my overcoat, found my travelling-cap, and was about to light a fresh cigarette when there came a tap at the door. Outside in the aisle stood a man with a silk hat in his hand.
"Monsieur, I am the Manager of the Compagnie Internationale. It is my pleasure to ask whether you have everything for your comfort. I am going on to Paris with this same train, so I shall be quite within your reach."
I thanked him for his courtesy, assured him that now that all my traps were in my berth and the conductor had shown me to my compartment, my wants were supplied, and watched him knock at the next door. Then I stepped out into the aisle.
It was an ordinary European Pullman, some ten staterooms in a row, a lavatory at one end and a three-foot sofa at the other. When you are unwilling to take your early morning coffee on the gritty, dust-covered, one-foot-square, propped-up-with-a-leg table in your stuffy compartment, you drink it sitting on this sofa. Three of these compartment doors were open. The woman with the dog was in Number One. The big dog and the maid in Number Two, and the Ring Master in Number Three (his original number, no doubt; the clerk had only lied)—I, of course, came next in Number Four.
Soon I became conscious that a discussion was going on in the newly arrived circus-car whose platform touched ours. I could hear the voice of a woman and then the gruff tones of a man. Then a babel of sounds came sifting down the aisle. I stepped over the dog, who had now stretched himself at full length in the aisle, and out on to the platform.
A third gentleman in chocolate—the porter of the circus-car and a duplicate of our own—was being besieged by a group of people all talking at once and all in different tongues. A mild-eyed, pink-cheeked young man in spectacles was speaking German; a richly dressed woman of thirty-five, very stately and very beautiful, was interpolating in Russian, and a plump, rosy-cheeked, energetic little Englishwoman was hurling English in a way as pointed as it was forcible. Everybody was excited and everybody was angry. Standing in the car-door listening intently was a French maid and two round-faced, wide-collared boys, of say ten and twelve. The dispute was evidently over these two boys, as every attack contained some direct allusion to "mes enfants" or "these children" or "die Kinder," ending in the forefinger of each speaker being thrust bayonet fashion toward the boys.
While I was making up my mind as to the particular roles which these several members of the Greatest Show on Earth played, I heard the English girl say—in French, of course—English-French—with an accent:
"It is a shame to be treated in this way. We have paid for every one of these compartments, and you know it. The young masters will not go in those vile-smelling staterooms for the night. It's no place for them. I will go to the office and complain."
excited.jpg (86K)
[Everybody was excited and everybody was mad.]
The third chocolate attendant, in reply, merely lifted his shoulders. It was the same old lift—a tired feeling seems to permeate these gentlemen, as if they were bored to death. A hotel clerk on the Riviera sometimes has this lift when he tells you he has not a bed in the house and you tell him he—prevaricates. I knew something of the lift—had already cost me five francs. I knew, too, what kind of medicine that sort of tired feeling needed, and that until the bribe was paid the young woman and her party would be bedless.
My own anger was now aroused. Here was a woman, rather a pretty woman, an Anglo-Saxon—my own race—in a strange city and under the power of a minion whose only object was plunder. That she jumped through hoops or rode bareback in absurdly short clothes, or sold pink lemonade in spangles, made no difference. She was in trouble, and needed assistance. I advanced with my best bow.
"Madam, can I do anything for you?"
She turned, and, with a grateful smile, said:
"Oh, you speak English?"
I again inclined my head.
"Well, sir, we have come from St. Petersburg by way of Berlin. We had five compartments through to Paris for our party when we started, all paid for, and this man has the tickets. He says we must get out here and buy new tickets or we must all go in two staterooms, which is impossible—" and she swept her hand over the balance of the troupe.
The chocolate gentleman again lifted his shoulders. He had been abused in that way by passengers since the day of his birth.
The richly dressed woman, another Leading Lady doubtless, now joined in the conversation—she probably was the trained rabbit-woman or the girl with the pigeons—pigeons most likely, for these stars are always selected by the management for their beauty, and she certainly was beautiful.
"And Monsieur"—this in French—again I spare the reader—"I have given him"—pointing to the chocolate gentleman—"pour boire all the time. One hundred francs yesterday and two gold pieces this morning. My maid is quite right—it is abominable, such treatment——"
The personalities now seemed to weary the attendant. His elbows widened, his shoulders nearly touched his ears, and his fingers opened; then he went into his closet and shut the door. So far as he was concerned the debate was closed.
The memory of my own five francs now loomed up, and with them the recollection of the trick by which they had been stolen from me.
"Madam," I said, gravely, "I will bring the manager. He is here and will see that justice is done you."
It was marvellous to watch what followed. The manager listened patiently to the Pigeon Charmer's explanation of the outrage, started suddenly when she mentioned some details which I did not hear, bowed as low to her reply as if she had been a Duchess—his hat to the floor—slid back the closet-door, beckoned me to step in, closed it again upon the three of us, and in less than five minutes he had the third chocolate gentleman out of his chocolate uniform and stripped to his underwear, with every pocket turned inside out, bringing to light the one-hundred-franc note, the gold pieces, and all five of the circus parties' tickets.
Then he flung the astonished and humiliated man his trousers, waited until he had pulled them on, grabbed him by his shirt-collar and marched him out of the car across the platform through the wicket gate, every passenger on the train looking on in wonder. Five minutes later the whole party—the stately Pigeon Charmer, her English maid, the spectacled German (performing sword-swallower or lightning calculator probably), and the two boys (tumblers unquestionably), with all their belongings—were transferred to my car, the Pigeon Charmer graciously accepting my escort, the passengers, including the bald-headed man—my room-mate—standing on one side to let us pass: all except the big dog, who had shifted his quarters, and was now stretched out at the sofa end of the car.
Then another extraordinary thing happened—or rather a series of extraordinary things.
When I had deposited the Pigeon Charmer in her own compartment (Number Five, next door), and had entered my own, I found my bald-headed room-mate again inside. This time he was seated by the foot-square, dust-covered table assorting cigarettes. He had transferred my small luggage—bag, coat, etc.—to thelowerberth, and had arranged his own belongings in the upper one.
He sprang to his feet the instant he saw me.
The bow of the Sleeping-Car Manager to the Pigeon Charmer was but a bend in a telegraph-pole to the sweep the bald-headed man now made me. I thought his scalp would touch the car-floor.
"No, your Highness," he cried, "I insist"—this to my protest that I had come last—that he had prior right—besides, he was an older man, etc., etc.—"I could not sleep if I thought you were not most comfortable—nothing can move me. Pardon me—will not your Highness accept one of my poor cigarettes? They, of course, are not like the ones you use, but I always do my best. I have now a new cigarette-girl, and she rolled them for me herself, and brought them to me just as I was leaving St. Petersburg. Permit me"—and he handed me a little leather box filled with Russian cigarettes.
Now, figuratively speaking, when you have been buncoed out of five francs by a menial in a ticket-office, jumped upon and trampled under foot by a gate-keeper who has kept you cooling your heels outside his wicket while your inferiors have passed in ahead of you—to have even a bald-headed man kotow to you, give you the choice berth in the compartment, move your traps himself, and then apologize for offering you the best cigarette you ever smoked in your life—well! that is to have myrrh, and frankincense, and oil of balsam, and balm of Gilead poured on your tenderest wound.
I accepted the cigarette.
Not haughtily—not even condescendingly—just as a matter of course. He had evidently found out who and what I was. He had seen me address the Pigeon Charmer, and had recognized instantly, from my speech and bearing—both, perhaps—that dominating vital force, that breezy independence which envelops most Americans, and which makes them so popular the world over. In thus kotowing he was only getting in line with the citizens of most of the other effete monarchies of Europe. Every traveller is conscious of it. His bow showed it—so did the soft purring quality of his speech. Recollections of Manila, Santiago, and the voyage of the Oregon around Cape Horn were in the bow, and Kansas wheat, Georgia cotton, and the Steel Trust in the dulcet tones of his voice. That he should have mistaken me for a great financial magnate controlling some one of these colossal industries, instead of locating me instantly as a staid, gray-haired, and rather impecunious landscape-painter, was quite natural. Others before him have made that same mistake. Why, then, undeceive him? Let it go—he would leave in the morning and go his way, and I should never see him more. So I smoked on, chatting pleasantly and, as was my custom, summing him up.
He was perhaps seventy—smooth-shaven—black—coal-black eyes. Dressed simply in black clothes—not a jewel—no watch-chain even—no rings on his hands but a plain gold one like a wedding-ring. His dressing-case showed the gentleman. Bottles with silver tops—brushes backed with initials—soap in a silver cup. Red morocco Turkish slippers with pointed toes; embroidered smoking-cap—all appointments of a man of refinement and of means. Tucked beside his razor-case were some books richly bound, and some bundles tied with red tape. Like most educated Russians, he spoke English with barely an accent.
I was not long in arriving at a conclusion. No one would have been—no one of my experience. He was either a despatch-agent connected with the Government, or some lawyer of prominence, who was on his way to Paris to look after the interests of some client of his in Russia. The latter, probably. The only man on the car he seemed to know, besides myself, was the Sleeping-Car Manager, who lifted his hat to him as he passed, and the Ring Master, with whom he stood talking at the door of his compartment. This, however, was before I had brought the Pigeon Charmer into the car.
The cigarette smoked, I was again in the corridor, the bald-headed man holding the door for me to pass out first.
It was now nine o'clock, and we had been under way an hour. I found the Pigeon Charmer occupying the sofa. The two young Acrobats and the Lightning Calculator were evidently in bed, and the maid, no doubt, busy preparing her mistress's couch for the night. She smiled quite frankly when I approached, and motioned me to a seat beside her. All these professional people the world over have unconventional manners, and an acquaintance is often easily made—at least, that has been my experience.
She began by thanking me in French for my share in getting her such comfortable quarters—dropped into German for a sentence or two, as if trying to find out my nationality—and finally into English, saying, parenthetically:
"You are English, are you not?"
No financial magnate this time—rather queer, I thought—that she missed that part of my personality. My room-mate had recognized it, even to the extent of calling me "Your Highness."
"No, an American."
"Oh, an American! Yes, I should have known—No, you are not English. You are too kind to be English. An Englishman would not have taken even a little bit of trouble to help us." I noticed the race prejudice in her tone, but I did not comment on it.
Then followed the customary conversation, I doing most of the talking. I began by telling her how big our country was; how many people we had; how rich the land; how wealthy the citizens; how great the opportunities for artists seeking distinction, etc. We all do that with foreigners. Then I tried to lead the conversation so as to find out something about herself—particularly where she could be seen in Paris. She was charming in her travelling-costume—she would be superb in low neck and bare arms, her pets snuggling under her chin, or alighting on her upraised, shapely hands. But either she did not understand, or she would not let me see she did—the last, probably, for most professional people dislike all reference to their trade by non-professionals—they object to be even mentally classed by themselves.
While we talked on, the Dog Woman opened the door of her compartment, knocked at the Dog's door—his Dogship and the maid were inside—patted the brute on his head, and re-entered her compartment and shut the door for the night.
I looked for some recognition between the two members of the same troupe, but my companion gave not the slightest sign that the Dog Woman existed. Jealous, of course, I said to myself. That's another professional trait.
The Ring Master now passed, raised his hat and entered his compartment. No sign of recognition; rather a cold, frigid stare, I thought.
The Sleeping-Car Manager next stepped through the car, lifted his hat when he caught sight of my companion, tiptoed deferentially until he reached the door, and went on to the next car. She acknowledged his homage with a slight bend of her beautiful head, rose from her seat, gave an order in Russian to her English maid who was standing in the door of her compartment, held out her hand to me with a frank good-night, and closed the door behind her.
I looked in on the bald-headed man. He was tucked away in the upper berth sound asleep.
When the next morning I moved up the long platform of the Gare du Nord in search of a cab, I stepped immediately behind the big Danish hound. He was walking along, his shoulders shaking as he walked, his tongue hanging from his mouth. The Woman had him by a leash, her maid following with the band-boxes, the feather boa, and the parasols. In the crowd behind me walked the bald-headed man, his arm, to my astonishment, through that of the King Master's.Theyboth kotowed as they switched off to the baggage-room, the Ring Master bowing even lower than my roommate.
Then I became sensible of a line of lackeys in livery fringing the edge of the platform, and at their head a most important-looking individual with a decoration on the lapel of his coat. He was surrounded by half a dozen young men, some in brilliant uniforms. They were greeting with great formality my fair companion of the night before! The two Acrobats, the German Calculator, and the English bareback-rider maid stood on one side.
My thought was that it was all an advertising trick of the Circus people, arranged for spectacular effect to help the night's receipts.
While I looked on in wonder, the Manager of the Sleeping-Car Company joined me.
"I must thank you, sir," he said, "for making known to me the outrage committed by one of our porters on the Princess. She is travelling incognito, and I did not know she was on the train until she told me last night who she was. We get the best men we can, but we are constantly having trouble of that kind with our porters. The trick is to give every passenger a whole compartment, and then keep packing them together unless they pay something handsome to be let alone. I shall make an example of that fellow. He is a new one and didn't know me"—and he laughed.
"Do they call her thePrincess?" I asked. They were certainly receiving her like one, I thought.
"Why, certainly, I thought you knew her," and he looked at me curiously, "the Princess Dolgorouki Sliniski. Her husband, the Prince, is attached to the Emperor's household. She is travelling with her two boys and their German tutor. The old gentleman with the white mustache now talking to her is the Russian Ambassador. And you only met her on the train? Old Azarian told me you knew her intimately."
"Azarian!" I was groping round in the fog now.
"Yes—your room-mate. He is an Armenian and one of the richest bankers in Russia. He lends money to the Czar. His brother got on with you at Cologne. There they go together to look after their luggage—they have an agency here, although their main bank is in St. Petersburg. The brother had the compartment next to that woman, with the big dog. She is the wife of a rich brewer in Cologne, and just think—we must always give that brute a compartment when she travels. Is it not outrageous? It is against the rules, but the orders come from up above"—and he jerked his finger meaningly over his shoulder.
The fog was so thick now I could cut it with a knife.
"One moment, please," I said, and I laid my hand on his elbow and looked him searchingly in the eye. I intended now to clear things up. "Was there a circus troupe on the train last night?"
"No." The answer came quite simply, and I could see it was the truth.
"Nor one expected?"
"No. Therewasa circus, but it went through last week."
It was on the Limited: 10.30 Night Express out of Louisville, bound south to Nashville and beyond.
I had lower Four.
When I entered the sleeper the porter was making up the berths, the passengers sitting about in each other's way until their beds were ready.
I laid my bag on an empty seat, threw my overcoat over its back, and sat down to face a newspaper within a foot of my nose. There was a man behind it, but he was too intent on its columns to be aware of my presence. I made an inspection of his arms and hands and right leg, the only portions of his surface exposed to view.
I noticed that the hands were strong and well-shaped, their backs speckled with brown spots—too well kept to have guided a plough and too weather-tanned to have wielded a pen. The leg which was crossed, the foot resting on the left knee, was full and sinewy, the muscles of the thigh well developed, and the round of the calf firmly modelled. The ankle was small and curved like an axe handle and looked as tough.
There are times when the mind lapses into vacancy. Nothing interests it. I find it so while waiting to have my berth made up; sleep is too near to waste gray matter.
A man's thighs, however, interest me in any mood and at any time. While you may get a man's character from his face, you can, if you will, get his past life from his thigh. It is the walking beam of his locomotion; controls his paddles and is developed in proportion to its uses. It indicates, therefore, the man's habits and his mode of life.
If he has sat all day with one leg lapped over the other, arm on chair, head on hand, listening or studying—preachers, professors, and all the other sedentaries sit like this—then the thigh shrinks, the muscles droop, the bones of the ankle bulge, and the knee-joints push through. If he delivers mail, or collects bills, or drives a pack-mule, or walks a tow-path, the muscles of the thigh are hauled taut like cables, the knee-muscles keep their place, the calves are full of knots—one big one in a bunch just below the strap of his knickerbockers, should he wear them.
If he carries big weights on his back—sacks of salt, as do the poor stevedores in Venice; or coal in gunnies, as do the coolies in Cuba; or wine in casks, or coffee in bags, then the calves swell abnormally, the thighs solidify; the lines of beauty are lost; but the lines of strength remain.
If, however, he has spent his life in the saddle, rounding up cattle, chasing Indians, hunting bandits in Mexico, ankle and foot loose, his knees clutched tightly, hugging that other part of him, the horse, then the muscles of the thigh round out their intended lines—the most subtle in the modulating curving of the body. The aboriginal bareback rider must have been a beauty.
I at once became interested then in the man before me, or rather in his thighs—the "Extra" hid the rest.
I began to picture him to myself—young, blond hair, blue eyes, drooping mustache, slouch hat canted rakishly over one eye; not over twenty-five years of age. I had thought forty, until a movement of the paper uncovered for a moment his waist-line which curved in instead of out. This settled it—not a day over twenty-five, of course!
The man's fingers tightened on the edges of the paper. He was still reading, entirely unconscious that my knees were within two inches of his own.
Then I heard this exclamation—
"It's a damned outrage!"
My curiosity got the better of me—I coughed.
The paper dropped instantly.
"My dear sir," he said, bending forward courteously and laying his hand on my wrist, "I owe you an apology. I had no idea anyone was opposite me."
If I was a surprise to him, he was doubly so to me.
My picture had vanished.
He was sixty-five, if a day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught together by a loose black cravat—a handsome, rather dashing sort of a man for one so old.
"I say it is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the negroes around here. Have you read the Extra?" passing it over to me—"Another this morning at Cramptown. It's an infernal outrage, sir!"
I had read the "Extra," with all its sickening details, and so handed it back to him.
"I quite agree with you," I said; "but this man was a brute."
"No doubt of it, sir. We've got brutal negroes among us, just as we've got brutal white men. But that's no reason why we should hang them without a trial; we still owe them that justice. When we dealt fairly with them there was never any such trouble. There were hundreds of plantations in the South during the war where the only men left were negroes. We trusted our wives and children to them; and yet such outrages as these were unheard of and absolutely impossible. I don't expect you to agree with me, of course; but I tell you, sir, the greatest injustice the North over did the slave was in robbing him of his home. I am going to have a smoke before going to bed. Won't you join me?"
Acquaintances are quickly made and as quickly ended in a Pullman. Men's ways lie in such diverse directions, and the hours of contact are often so short, that no one can afford to be either ungracious or exclusive. The "buttoned-up" misses the best part of travelling. He is like a camera with the cap on—he never gets a new impression. The man with the shutters of his ears thrown wide and the lids of his eyes tied back gets a new one every hour.
If, in addition to this, he wears the lens of his heart upon his sleeve, and will adjust it so as to focus the groups around him—it may be a pair of lovers, or some tired mother, or happy child, or lonely wayfarer, or a waif—he will often get a picture of joy, or sorrow, or hope—life dramas all—which will not only enrich the dull hours of travel, but will leave imprints on the mind which can be developed later into the richest and tenderest memories of his life.
I have a way of arranging my own sensitized plates, and I get a certain amount of entertainment out of the process, and now and then a Rembrandt effect whose lights and darks often thrill me for days.
So when this unknown man, with his young legs and his old face, asked me, on one minute's acquaintance, to smoke, I accepted at once.
"I am right about it, my dear sir," he continued, biting off the end of a cigar and sharing with me the lighted match. "The negro is infinitely worse off than in the slave days. We never had to hang any one of them then to make the others behave themselves."
"How do you account for it?" I asked, settling myself in my chair. (We were alone in the smoking compartment.)
"Account for what?"
"The change that has come over the South—to the negro," I answered.
"The negro has become a competitor, sir. The interests of the black man and the white man now lie apart. Once the white man was his friend; now he is his rival."
His eyes were boring into mine; his teeth set tight.
The doctrine was new to me, but I did not interrupt him.
"It wasn't so in the old days. We shared what we had with them. One-third of the cabins of the South were filled with the old and helpless. Now these unfortunates are out in the cold; their own people can't help them, and the white man won't."
"Were you a slave-owner?" I asked, not wishing to dispute the point.
"No, sir; but my father was. He had fifty of them on our plantation. He never whipped one of them, and he wouldn't let anybody else strike them, either. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't have come back if we had had a place to put him. The old ones are all dead now, thank God!—all except old Aleck; he's around yet."
"One of your father's slaves, did you say?"
I was tapping away at the door of his recollections, camera all ready.
"Yes; he carried me about on his back when I was so high," and he measured the distance with his hand. "Aleck and I were boys together. I was about eight and he about fifteen when my father got him."
My companion paused, drumming on the leather covering of his chair. I waited, hoping he would at least open his door wide enough to give me a glimpse inside.
"Curiously enough," he went on, "I've been thinking of Aleck all day. I heard yesterday that he was sick again, and it has worried me a good deal. He's pretty feeble now, and I don't know how long he'll last."
He flicked the ashes from his cigar, nursing his knee with the other hand. The leg must have pained him, for I noticed that he lifted it carefully and moved it on one side, as if for greater relief.
"Rheumatism?" I ventured, sympathetically.
"No; justgetsthat way sometimes," he replied, carelessly. "But Aleck's got it bad; can hardly walk. Last time I saw him he was about bent double."
Again he relapsed into silence, smoking quietly.
"And you tell me," I said, "that this old slave was loyal to your family after his freedom?"
He hadn't told me anything of the kind; but I had found his key-hole now, and was determined to get inside his door, even if I picked the lock with a skeleton-key.
"Aleck!" he cried, rousing himself with a laugh; "well, I should say so! Anybody would be loyal who'd been treated as my father treated Aleck. He took him out of jail and gave him a home, and would have looked after him till he died if the war hadn't broken out. Aleck wasn't raised on our plantation. He was a runaway from North Carolina. There were three of them that got across the river—a man and his wife and Aleck. The slave-driver had caught Aleck in our town and had locked him up in the caboose for safe-keeping. Then he came to my father to help him catch the other two. But my father wasn't that kind of a man. The old gentleman had curious notions about a good many things. He believed when a slave ran away that the fault was oftener the master's than the negro's. 'They are nothing but children,' he would say, 'and you must treat them like children. Whipping is a poor way to bring anybody up.'
"So when my father heard about the three runaways he refused to have anything to do with the case. This made the driver anxious.
"'Judge,' he said—my father had been a Judge of the County Court for years—'if you'll take the case I'll give you this boy Aleck as a fee. He's worth a thousand dollars.'
"'Send for him,' said my father. 'I'll tell you when I see him.'
"So they brought him in. He was a big, strong boy, with powerful shoulders, black as a chunk of coal, and had a look about him that made you trust him at first sight. My father believed in him the moment he saw him.
"'What did you run away for, Aleck?' he asked.
"The boy held his head down.
"'My mother died, Marster, an' I couldn't stay dar no mo'.'
"'I'll take him,' said my father; 'but on condition that the boy wants to live with me.'
"This was another one of the old gentleman's notions. He wouldn't have a negro on the place that he had to watch, nor one that wasn't happy.
"The driver opened his eyes and laughed; but my father meant what he said, and the papers were made out on those terms. The boy was outside in charge of the Sheriff while the papers were being drawn, and when they were signed the driver brought him in and said:
"'He's your property, Judge.'
"'Aleck,' father said, 'you've heard?'
"'Yes, sah.'
"The boy stood with tears in his eyes. He thought he was going to get a life-sentence. He had never faced a judge before.
"'Well, you're my property now, and I've got a proposition to make to you. There's my horse outside hitched to that post. Get on him and ride out to my plantation, two miles from here; anybody'll tell you where it is. Talk to my negroes around the quarters, and then go over to Mr. Shandon's and talk to his negroes—find out from any one of them what kind of a master I am, and then come back to me here before sundown and tell me if you want to live with me. If you don't want to live with me you can go free. Do you understand?'
"My father said it all over again. Aleck looked at the driver, then at the Sheriff, and then at my father. Then he crept out of the room, got on the mare, and rode up the pike.
"'You've thrown your money away,' said the driver, shrugging his shoulders. 'You'll never see that nigger again.'
"The Sheriff laughed, and they both went out. Father said nothing and waited. About an hour before sundown back came Aleck. Father always said he never saw a man change so in four hours. He went out crouching like a dog, his face over his shoulder, scared to death, and he came back with his head up and a snap in his eye, looking as if he could whip his weight in wildcats.
"'I'll go wid ye, an' thank ye all my life,' was all he said.
"Well, it got out around the village, and that night the other two runaways—the man and wife—they were hiding in the town—gave themselves up, and one of our neighbors bought them both and set them to work on a plantation next to ours, and the driver went away happy.
"I was a little fellow then, running around barefooted, but I remember meeting Aleck just as if it were yesterday. He was holding the horse while my father and the overseer stood talking on one side. They were planning his work and where he should sleep. I crept up to look at him. I had heard he was coming and that he was a runaway slave. I thought his back would be bloody and all cut to pieces, and that he'd have chains on him, and I was disappointed because I couldn't see his skin through his shirt and because his hands were free. I must have gotten too near the mare, for before I knew it he had lifted me out of danger.
"'What's your name?' I asked.
"'Aleck,' he said; 'an' what's your name, young marster?'
"'Sammy,' I said.
"That's the way it began between us, and it's kept on ever since. I call him 'Aleck,' and he calls me 'Sammy'—never anything else, even today."
"He calls you 'Sammy'!" I said, in astonishment. The familiarity was new to me between master and slave.
"Yes, always. There isn't another person in the world now that calls me 'Sammy,'" he answered, with a tremor in his voice.
My travelling-companion stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, drew a silver match-safe from his pocket, relighted his cigar, and continued.
"The overseer put Aleck to ploughing the old orchard that lay between the quarters and the house. I sneaked out to watch him as a curious child would, still intent on seeing his wounds. Soon as Aleck saw me, he got a board and nailed it on the plough close to the handle for a seat, and tied up the old horse's tail so it wouldn't switch in my face, and put me on it, and I never left that plough till sundown. My father asked Aleck where he had learned that trick, and Aleck told him he used to take his little brother that way before he died.
"After the orchard was ploughed Aleck didn't do a thing but look after me. We fished together and went swimming together; and we hunted eggs and trapped rabbits; and when I got older and had a gun Aleck would go along to look after the dogs and cut down the trees when we were out for coons.
"Once I tumbled into a catfish-hole by the dam, and he fished me out; and once, while he had crawled in after a woodchuck, a rock slipped and pinned him down, and I ran two miles to get help, and fell in a faint before I could tell them where he was. What Aleck had in those days I had, and what I had he had; and there was no difference between us till the war broke out.
"I was grown then, and Aleck was six or seven years older. We were on the border-line, and one morning the Union soldiers opened fire, and all that was left of the house, barns, outbuildings, and negro quarters was a heap of ashes.
"That sent me South, of course, feeling pretty ugly and bitter, and I don't know that I've gotten over it since. My father was too old to go, and he and my mother moved into the village and lived in two rooms over my father's office. The negroes, of course, had to shift for themselves, and hard shifting it was—the women and children herding in the towns and the men working as teamsters and doing what they could.
"The night before I left home Aleck crawled out to see me. I was hidden in a hayrick in the lower pasture. He begged me to let him go with me, but I knew father would want him, and he finally gave in and promised to stay with him, and I left. But no one was his own master in those days, and in a few months they had drafted Aleck and carried him off.
"Three years after that my mother fell ill, and I heard of it and came back in disguise, and was arrested as a suspicious character as I entered the town. I didn't blame them, for I looked like a tramp and intended to. The next day I was let out and went home to where my mother and father were living. As I was opening the garden-gate—it was night—Aleck laid his hand on my shoulder. He had on the uniform of a United States soldier. I couldn't believe my eyes at first. I had lost track of him, and, as I found out afterward, so had my father. We stood under the street-lamp and he saw the look in my face and threw his hands up over his head as a negro does when some sudden shock comes to him.
"'Don't turn away f'om me, Sammy,' he cried; 'please don't, Sammy. 'Tain't my fault I got on dese clo'es, 'deed it ain't. Dey done fo'ced me. I heared you was here an' I been tryin' to git to ye all day. Oh, I so glad to git hold ob ye, Sammy, so glad, so glad.' He broke out into sobs of crying. I was near it myself, for he was the first one from home I had seen, and there was something in his voice that went through me.
"Then he unbuttoned his coat, felt in his pocket, pushed something into my hand, and disappeared in the darkness. When I got inside and held it out to the light, he had given me two five-dollar greenbacks!
"I was sitting by my mother the next night about ten o'clock—she wouldn't let me out of her sight—when there came a rap at the door and Aleck came in. I knew how my father would feel about seeing him in those clothes. I didn't know till afterward that they were all he had and that the poor fellow was as bad off as any of us.
"Father opened upon Aleck right away, just as I knew he would, without giving him a chance to speak. He upbraided him for going into the Army, told him to take his money back, and showed him the door. The old gentleman could be pretty savage when he wanted to, and he didn't spare Aleck a bit. Aleck never said a word—just listened to my father's abuse of him—his hands folded over his cap, his eyes on the two bills lying on the table where my father had thrown them. Then he said, slowly:
"'Marse Henry, I done hearn ye every word. You don't want me here no mo', an' I'm gwine away. I ain't a-fightin' agin you an' Sammy an' neber will—it's 'cause I couldn't help it dat I'm wearin' dese clo'es. As to dis money dat you won't let Sammy take, it's mine to gib 'cause I saved it up. I gin it to Sammy 'cause I fotched him up an' 'cause he's as much mine as he is your'n. He'll tell ye so same's me. If you say I got to take dat money back I got to do it 'cause I ain't neber dis'beyed ye an' I ain't gwine to begin now. But I don't want yer ter say it, Marse Henry—I don't want yer to say it. You is my marster I know, but Sammy is mychile. An' anudder thing, dey ain't gwine to let him stay in dis town more'n a day. I found dat out yisterday when I heared he'd come. Dar ain't no money whar he's gwine, an' dis money ain't nothin' to me 'cause I kin git mo' an' maybe Sammy can't. Please, Marse Henry, let Sammy keep dis money. Dere didn't useter be no diff'ence 'tween us, and dere oughtn't to be none now.'
"My father didn't speak again—he hadn't the heart, and Aleck went out, leaving the money on the table."
Again my companion stopped and fumbled over the matches in his safe, striking one or two nervously and relighting his cigar. It was astonishing how often it went out. I sat with my eyes riveted on his face. I could see now the lines of tenderness about his mouth and I caught certain cadences in his voice which revealed to me but too clearly why the negro loved him and why he must always be only a boy to the old slave. The cigar a-light, he went on:
"When the war closed I came home and began to pick up my life again. Aleck had gone to Wisconsin and was living in the same town as young Cruger, one of my father's law-students. When my father died, I telegraphed Cruger, inviting him to serve as one of the pall-bearers, and asked him to find Aleck and tell him. I knew he would be hurt if I didn't let him know.
"At two o'clock that night my niece, who was with my mother, rapped at my door. I was sitting up with my father's body and would go down every hour to see that everything was all right.
"'There's a man trying to get in at the front door,' she said. I got up at once and went downstairs. I could see the outlines of a man's figure moving in the darkness, but I could not distinguish the features.
"'Who is it?' I asked, throwing open the door and peering out.
"'It's me, Sammy—it's Aleck. Take me to my ole marster.'
"He came in and stood where the light fell full upon him. I hardly knew him, he was so changed—much older and bent, and his clothes hung on him in rags.