The Southerner | Page 6

in the distance.
The Boy clung close to her side and his voice was husky as he spoke:
"Ain't you afraid, Ma?"
The calm answer rang forever through his memory:
"I don't know what fear means, my Boy. It's not the first time I've
caught these prowling scoundrels."
Next morning he saw the dark blood marks on the trail over which the

thief had fled, and looked into his mother's wistful grey eyes with a
new reverence and awe.
IV
The Boy was quick to know and love the birds of hedge and field and
woods. The martins that built in his gourds on the tall pole had opened
his eyes. The red and bluebirds, the thrush, the wren, the robin, the
catbird, and song sparrows were his daily companions.
A mocking-bird came at last to build her nest in a bush beside the
garden, and her mate began to make the sky ring with his song. The
puzzle of the feathered tribe whose habits he couldn't fathom was the
whip-poor-will. His mother seemed to dislike his ominous sound. But
the soft mournful notes appealed to the Boy's fancy. Often at night he
sat in the doorway of the cabin watching the gathering shadows and the
flicker of the fire when supper was cooking, listening to the tireless
song within a few feet of the house.
"Why don't you like 'em, Ma?" he asked, while one was singing with
unusually deep and haunting voice so near the cabin that its echo
seemed to come from the chimney jamb.
It was some time before she replied:
"They say it's a sign of death for them to come so close to the house."
The Boy laughed:
"You don't believe it?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I like 'em," he stoutly declared. "I like to feel the cold shivers
when they sing right under my feet. You're not afraid of a little
whip-poor-will?"
He looked up into her sombre face with a smile.

"No," was the gentle answer, "but I want to live to see my Boy a fine
strong man," she paused, stooped, and drew him into her arms.
There was something in her tones that brought a lump into his throat.
The moon was shining in the full white glory of the Southern spring. A
night of marvellous beauty enfolded the little cabin. He looked into her
eyes and they were shining with tears.
"What's the matter?" he asked tenderly.
"Nothing, Boy, I'm just dreaming of you!"
* * * * *
The first day of the fall in his sixth year he asked his mother to let him
go to the next corn-shucking.
"You're too little a boy."
"I can shuck corn," he stoutly argued.
"You'll be good, if I let you go?" she asked.
"What's to hurt me there?"
"Nothing, unless you let it. The men drink whiskey, the girls dance.
Sometimes there's a quarrel or fight."
"It won't hurt me ef I 'tend to my own business, will it?"
"Nothing will ever hurt you, if you'll just do that, Boy," the father broke
in.
"May I go?"
"Yes, we're invited next week to a quilting and corn-shucking. I'll go
with you."
The Boy shouted for joy and counted the days until the wonderful event.

They left home at two o'clock in the wagon. The quilting began at three,
the corn-shucking at sundown.
The house was a marvellous structure to the Boy's excited imagination.
It was the first home he had ever seen not built of logs.
"Why, Ma," he cried in open-eyed wonder, "there ain't no logs in the
house! How did they ever put it together?"
"With bricks and mortar."
The Boy couldn't keep his eyes off this building. It was a simple,
one-story square structure of four rooms and an attic, with little dormer
windows peeping from the four sides of the pointed roof. McDonald,
the thrifty Scotch-Irishman, from the old world, had built it of bricks he
had ground and burnt on his own place.
The dormer windows peeping from the roof caught the Boy's fancy.
"Do you reckon his boys sleep up there and peep out of them holes?"
The mother smiled.
"Maybe so."
"Why don't we build a house like that?" he asked at last. "Don't you
want it?"
The mother squeezed his little hand:
"When you're a man will you build your mother one?"
He looked into her eyes a moment, caught the pensive longing and
answered:
"Yes. I will."
She stooped and kissed the firm mouth and was about to lead him into
the large work-room where the women were gathering around the quilts

stretched on their frames, when a negro slave suddenly appeared to take
her horse to the stable. He was fat, jolly and coal black. His yellow
teeth gleamed in their blue gums