The Deliverance | Page 7

a solitary chestnut tree in full bloom.
Farther away swept the freshly ploughed ground over which passed the
moving figures of the labourers transplanting the young crop. Of them
all, Carraway saw but a single worker--in reality, only one among the
daily toilers in the field, moulded physically perhaps in a finer shape
than they, and limned in the lawyer's mental vision against a century of
the brilliant if tragic history of his race. As he moved slowly along
between the even rows, dropping from time to time a plant into one of

the small holes dug before him, and pausing with the basket on his arm
to settle the earth carefully with his foot, he seemed, indeed, as much
the product of the soil upon which he stood as did the great white
chestnut growing beside the road. In his pose, in his walk, in the
careless carriage of his head, there was something of the large freedom
of the elements.
"A dangerous young giant," observed the lawyer slowly, letting his
glasses fall before his eyes. "A monumental Blake, as it were. Well, as
I have remarked before upon occasions, blood will tell, even at the
dregs."
"He's the very spit of his pa, that's so," replied Peterkin, "an' though it's
no business of mine, I'm afeared he's got the old gentleman's dry throat
along with it. Lord! Lord! I've always stood it out that it's better to
water yo' mouth with tobaccy than to burn it up with sperits." He
checked himself and fell back hastily, for young Blake, after a single
glance at the west, had tossed his basket carelessly aside, and was
striding vigorously across the field.
"Not another plant will I set out, and that's an end of it!" he was saying
angrily. "I agreed to do a day's work and I've been at it steadily since
sunrise. Is it any concern of mine, I'd like to know, if he can't put in his
crop to-night? Do you think I care whether his tobacco rots in the
ground or out of it?"
As he came on, Carraway measured him coolly, with an appreciation
tempered by his native sense of humour. He perceived at once a certain
coarseness of finish which, despite the deep-rooted veneration for an
idle ancestry, is found most often in the descendants of a long line of
generous livers. A moment later he weighed the keen gray flash of the
eyes beneath the thick fair hair, the coating of dust and sweat over the
high-bred curve from brow to nose, and the fullness of the jaw which
bore with a suggestion of sheer brutality upon the general impression of
a fine racial type. Taken from the mouth up, the face might have passed
as a pure, fleshly copy of the antique idea; seen downward, it became
almost repelling in its massive power.
Stooping beside the fence for a common harvest hat, the young man
placed it on his head, and gave a careless nod to Peterkin. He had
thrown one leg over the rails, and was about to swing himself into the
road, when Sol spoke a little timidly.

"I hear yo' ma's done lost her yaller cat, Mr. Christopher."
For an instant Christopher hung midway of the fence.
"Isn't the beast back yet?" he asked irritably, scraping the mud from his
boot upon the rail. "I've had Uncle Boaz scouring the county half the
day."
A pack of hounds that had been sleeping under the sassafras bushes
across the road came fawning to his feet, and he pushed them
impatiently aside.
"I was thinkin'," began Peterkin, with an uncertain cough, "that I might
manage to send over my big white Tom, an', bein' blind, maybe she
wouldn't know the difference."
Christopher shook his head.
"Oh, it's no use," he replied, speaking with an air of superiority. "She
could pick out that cat among a million, I believe, with a single touch.
Well, there's no help for it. Down, Spot--down, I say, Sir!"
With a leisurely movement he swung himself from the fence, stopping
to wipe his brow with his blue cotton sleeve. Then he went whistling
defiantly down the way to the Hall, turning at last into a sunken road
that trailed by an abandoned ice-pond where bullfrogs were croaking
hoarsely in the rushes.

CHAPTER II.
The Owner of Blake Hall
As they followed the descending road between flowering chestnuts,
Blake Hall rose gradually into fuller view, its great oaks browned by
the approaching twilight and the fading after-glow reflected in a single
visible pane. Seen close at hand, the house presented a cheerful
spaciousness of front--a surety of light and air--produced in part by the
clean white, Doric columns of the portico and in part by the ample
slope of shaven