The old man lived by himself in the cabin by the River Swamp. His
wife and son had long been dead, and though he had sheltered, fed,
clothed, and taught to work several negro lads, these had gone their
way. Peter was particularly attached to him, and the old man
returned his affection with interest.

The dark fell rapidly. You could hear the trees in the River Swamp
crying out as the wind tormented them. On a night like this, with
lightning snaking through it and wild wind trying to tear the heart
out of its thin cypresses, and the cane-brake rustling ominously in
its unchancy black stretches, one might believe that the place was
haunted, as the negroes said it was. Daddy Neptune was moved to tell
Peter some of his own experiences with the River Swamp. He spoke,
between puffs of his corn-cob pipe, of the night Something had come
out of it--_pitterpat! pitterpat!_--right at his heels. It had
followed him to the very edge of his home clearing. Daddy Neptune
wasn't exactly _afraid_, but he knew that Something hadn't any
business to be pitterpattering at his heels, so he had turned around
and said:

"Ef you-all come out o' hebben, you 's wastin' good time 'yuh. Ef
Dey-all lef' you come out o' hell, you bes' git right back whah you
b'longs. One ways, _I_ ain't got nothin' I kin tell you; t'other
ways, _you_ ain't got nothin' I 's gwine to let you tell me. I 's
axin' you to _git_. En," finished Neptune, "dat t'ing done went
right _out_--whish!--same lak I 's tellin' you! Yessuh! hit went
spang _out_!" He threw another chunk of fatwood on the fire, and
watched the smoky flame go dancing up the chimney. In the red glow
he had the aspect of a kindly Titan.