when I cashed it at the bank at the corner, where my landlady, suddenly gracious, made me known.     

       Three days later, I was on my way to “The Pines.”      

       The country, more and more flat and sandy, with stunted pines and negro huts, with shabby patches of corn and potatoes, was sad under a low, moist sky, but my heart was high with a sense of adventure at all times strong in me, and I read promise between the lines of Mrs. Brane's kind little note.     

       I slept well in my berth that night and the next afternoon came safely to Pine Cone. My only experience had been the rather annoying, covert attention of a man on the train. He was a pleasant-enough looking fellow and, though he tried to conceal his scrutiny, it was disagreeably incessant. I was glad to leave him on the train, and I saw his face peering out of the window at me and caught a curious expression when I climbed into the cart that had been sent to meet me from “The Pines.” It was a look of intense excitement, and, it seemed to me, almost of alarm. Also, his fingers drew a note-book from his pocket and he fell to writing in it as the train went out. I could not help the ridiculous fancy that he was taking notes on me.     

       I had never been in the South before, and the country impressed me as being the most desolate I had ever seen. Our road took us straight across the level fields towards a low, cloudlike bank of pines. We passed through a small town blighted by poverty and dark with negro faces which had none of the gayety I associated with their race. These men and women greeted us, to be sure, but in rather a gloomy fashion, not without grace and even a certain stateliness. The few whites looked poorer than the blacks or were less able to conceal their poverty.     

       My driver was a grizzled negro, friendly, but, I soon found, very deaf. He was eager to talk, but so often misinterpreted my shouted questions that I gave it up. I learned, at least, that we had an eight-mile drive before us; that there was a swamp beyond the pine woods; that the climate was horribly unhealthy in summer so that most of the gentry deserted, but that Mrs. Brane always stayed, though she sent her little boy away.     

       “Lit'l Massa Robbie, he's jes' got back. Sho'ly we-all's glad to see him too. Jes' makes world of 

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