positive testimony of actual freedom—the first fruits of self-seeking, self-helping manhood on the part of his race which had come into the secluded country region and gladdened the heart of the stricken prophet and adviser.
With a sudden jerk he threw himself off his low bench, and burying his head upon it poured forth a prayer of gratitude for this evidence of prayer fulfilled. His voice was full of tears, and when he said "Amen," and Nimbus rose from his knees and put forth his hand to help him as he scrambled upon his bench, the cripple caught the hand and pressed it close, as he said:
"Bress God, Nimbus, I'se seen de time often an' often 'nough when I'se hed ter ax de Lor' ter keep me from a-envyin' an' grudgin' de white folks all de good chances dey hed in dis world; but now I'se got ter fight agin' covetin' anudder nigga's luck. Bress de Lor', Nimbus, I'se gladder, I do b'lieve, fer what's come ter you dan yer be yerself. It'll do you a power of good—you an' yours—but what good wud it do if a poor crippled feller like me hed it? Not a bit. Jes' git him bread an' meat, Nimbus, dat's all. Oh, de Lord knows what he's 'bout, Nimbus. Mind you dat. He didn't give you all dat money fer nothing, an' yer'll hev ter 'count fer it, dat you will; mighty close too, 'kase he keeps his books right. Yer must see ter dat, Bre'er Nimbus." The exhortation was earnestly given, and was enforced with tears and soft strokings of the dark strong hand which he still clasped in his soft and slender ones.
"Now don't you go ter sayin' nuffin' o' dat kind, ole feller. I'se been a-tinkin' ebber sence I got dat money dat it's jes ez much 'Liab's ez'tis mine. Ef it hadn't been fer you I'd nebber knowed 'nough ter go ober to de Yanks, when ole Mahs'r send me down ter wuk on de fo'tifications, an' so I neber git it at all. So now, yer see, Bre'er 'Liab, you's gwine ter keep dat 'ere money. I don't feel half safe wid it nohow, till we find out jes what we wants ter do wid it. I 'lows dat we'd better buy a plantation somewheres. Den I kin wuk it, yer know, an' you kin hev a shop, an' so we kin go cahoots, an' git along right smart. Yer see, ef we do dat, we allers hez a livin', anyhow, an' der ain't no such thing ez spendin' an' losin' what we've got."
There was great demurrer on the part of the afflicted friend, but he finally consented to become his old crony's banker. He insisted, however, on giving him a very formal and peculiarly worded receipt for the money and papers which he received from him. Considering that they had to learn the very rudiments of business, Eliab Hill was altogether right in insisting upon a scrupulous observance of what he deemed "the form of sound words."
In speaking of the son of his former owner as "Mister," Eliab Hill meant to display nothing of arrogance or disrespect. The titles "Master" and "Missus," were the badges of slavery and inferiority. Against their use the mind of the freedman rebelled as instinctively as the dominant race insisted on its continuance. The "Black Codes" of 1865, the only legislative acts of the South since the war which were not affected in any way by national power or Northern sentiment, made it incumbent on the freedman, whom it sought to continue in serfdom, to use this form of address, and denounced its neglect as disrespectful to the "Master" or "Mistress." When these laws ceased to be operative, the custom of the white race generally was still to demand the observance of the form, and this demand tended to embitter the dislike of the freedmen for it. At first, almost the entire race refused. After a while the habit of generations began to assert itself. While the more intelligent and better educated of the original stock discarded its use entirely, the others, and the children who had grown up since emancipation, came to use it almost interchangeably with the ordinary form of address. Thus Eliab Hill, always nervously alive to the fact of freedom, never allowed the words to pass his lips after the Surrender, except when talking with Mrs. Le Moyne, to whose kindness he owed so much-in early years. On the other hand, Nimbus, with an equal aversion to everything connected with slavery, but without the same mental activity, sometimes dropped into the old familiar habit. He would have died rather than use the word at another's dictation or as a badge of inferiority, but the habit was too strong for one of his grade of intellect to break away from at once. Since the success of the old slaveholding element of the South in subverting the governments based on the equality of political right and power, this form of address has become again almost universal except in the cities and large towns.
CHAPTER XI.
RED WING.
Situated on the sandy, undulating chain of low, wooded hills which separated the waters of two tributaries of the Roanoke, at the point where the "big road" from the West crossed the country road which ran northward along the crest of the ridge, as if in search of dry footing between the rich valleys on either hand, was the place known as Red Wing. The "big road" had been a thoroughfare from the West in the old days before steam diverted the ways of traffic from the trails which the wild beasts had pursued. It led through the mountain gaps, by devious ways but by easy grades, along the banks of the water-courses and across the shallowest fords down to the rich lowlands of the East. It was said that the buffalo, in forgotten ages, had marked out this way to the ever-verdant reed-pastures of the then unwooded East; that afterward the Indians had followed his lead, and, as the season served, had fished upon the waters of Currituck or hunted amid the romantic ruggedness of the Blue Appalachians. It was known that the earlier settlers along the Smoky Range and on the Piedmont foot-hills had used this thoroughfare to take the stock and produce of their farms down to the great plantations of the East, where cotton was king, and to the turpentine orchards of the South Atlantic shore line.
At the crossing of these roads was situated a single house, which had been known for generations, far and near, as the Red Wing Ordinary. In the old colonial days it had no doubt been a house of entertainment for man and beast. Tradition, very well based and universally accepted, declared that along these roads had marched and countermarched the hostile forces of the Revolutionary period. Greene and Cornwallis had dragged their weary columns over the tenacious clay of this region, past the very door of the low-eaved house, built up of heavy logs at first and covered afterward with fat-pine siding, which had itself grown brown and dark with age. It was said that the British regulars had stacked their arms around the trunk of the monster white-oak that stretched its great arms out over the low dark house, which seemed to be creeping nearer and nearer to its mighty trunk for protection, until of late years the spreading branches had dropped their store of glossy acorns and embossed cups even on the farther slope of its mossy roof, a good twenty yards away from the scarred and rugged bole. "Two decks and a passage"—two moderate-sized rooms with a wide open pass-way between, and a low dark porch running along the front—constituted all that was left of a once well-known place of public refreshment. At each end a stone chimney, yellowish gray and of a massiveness now wonderful to behold, rose above the gable like a shattered tower above the salient of some old fortress. The windows still retained the little square panes and curious glazing of a century ago. Below it, fifty yards away to the eastward, a bold spring burst out of the granite rock, spread deep and still and cool over its white sandy bottom, in the stone-walled inclosure where it was confined (over half of which stood the ample milk-house), and then gurgling along the stony outlet ran away over the ripple-marked sands of its worn channel, to join the waters of the creek a mile away.
It was said that in the olden time there had been sheds and out-buildings, and perhaps some tributary houses for the use of lodgers, all of which belonged to and constituted a part of the Ordinary. Two things had deprived it of its former glory. The mart-way had changed even before the iron horse charged across the old routes, scorning their pretty curves and dashing in an almost direct line from mountain to sea. Increasing population had opened new routes, which diverted the traffic and were preferred to the old way by travelers. Besides this, there had been a feud between the owner of the Ordinary and the rich proprietor whose outspread acres encircled on every side the few thin roods which were attached to the hostel, and when the owner thereof died and the property, in the course of administration, was put upon the market, the rich neighbor bought it, despoiled it of all its accessories, and left only the one building of two rooms below and two above, a kitchen and a log stable, with crib attached, upon the site of the Ordinary which had vexed him so long. The others were all cleared away, and even the little opening around the Ordinary was turned out to grow