Charles W. Chesnutt

“ God have made hearts to so yearn for one another
if He had meant them to stay forever apart? If
this girl should die, it would be he who had killed
her, by his cruelty, no less surely than if with
his own hand he had struck her down. ”

“ He urged the mare forward; if she would but
keep up her present pace, he would reach Patesville
by nightfall.
Dr. Green had just gone down the garden path
to his buggy at the gate. Mis' Molly came out to
the back piazza, where Frank, weary and haggard,
sat on the steps with Homer Pettifoot and Billy
Oxendine, who, hearing of Rena's return, had
come around after their day's work.
"Rena wants to see you, Frank," said Mis'
Molly, with a sob. ”

“ The driver, when questioned, said that he had met
a young negro with a mule, and a cart in which
lay a young woman, white to all appearance, but
claimed by the negro to be a colored girl who
had been taken sick on the road, and whom he
was conveying home to her mother at Patesville.
From a further description of the cart Tryon
recognized it as the one he had met the day before.
The woman could be no other than Rena. He
turned his mare and set out swiftly on the road to
Patesville. ”

“ Toward evening Frank
heard hounds baying in the distance. A fox,
weary with running, brush drooping, crossed the
road ahead of the cart. Presently, the hounds
straggled across the road, followed by two or three
hunters on horseback, who stopped at sight of the
strangely canopied cart. They stared at the sick
girl and demanded who she was.
"I don't b'lieve she's black at all," declared
one, after Frank's brief explanation. "This nigger
has a bad eye,--he's up ter some sort of
devilment. What ails the girl?"
" 'Pears ter be some kind of a fever," replied
Frank ”

“ The barrel factory had so affected the
cooper's trade that Peter and Frank had turned
their attention more or less to the manufacture of
small woodenware for domestic use. Frank's mule
was eating off its own head, as the saying goes. It
required but little effort to persuade Peter that
his son might take a load of buckets and tubs and
piggins into the country and sell them or trade
them for country produce at a profit.
In a few days Frank had his stock prepared, and
set out on the road to Sampson County. ”

“ But Frank observed that Mis' Molly,
when pressed as to the date of Rena's return, grew
more and more indefinite; and finally the mother,
in a burst of confidential friendship, told Frank of
all her hopes with reference to the stranger from
down the country.
"Yas, Frank," she concluded, "it'll be her own
fault ef she don't become a lady of proputty, fer
Mr. Wain is rich, an' owns a big plantation, an'
hires a lot of hands, and is a big man in the county. ”