"I was a fool, and blind, then; but I can see now," he said to himself,
as he looked around at the marks of poverty, or shiftlessness, or both,
and contrasted them with his home in the North.

The floor was bare, with the exception of a mat laid before the door
leading into another and larger room, before one of the windows of which
a white curtain was gently blowing in the wind. A rough, uncovered table
pushed against the wall, three or four chairs, and a hair-cloth settee
completed the furniture, with the exception of a low rocking-chair, in
which sat huddled and wrapped in a shawl a little old woman whose
yellow, wrinkled face told of the snuff habit, and bore a strong
resemblance to a mummy, except that the woman wore a cap with a fluted
frill, and moved her head up and down like Christmas toys of old men and
women. She was evidently asleep, as she gave no sign of consciousness
that any one was there.

"Old Miss," the stranger said, and his breath again came gaspingly, and
Tom Hardy's advice looked more and more reasonable, while he cursed
himself for the fool he had been, and would have given all he was worth,
and even half his life, to be rid of this thing weighing him down like a
nightmare from which he could not awaken.

He was roused at last by the sound of bare feet on the stairs in a
corner of the room. Some one was coming, and in a moment Mandy Ann stood
before him, her eyes shining, and her teeth showing white against the
ebony of her skin. In her rush through the woods Mandy Ann had come upon
her young mistress looking for the few berries which grew upon the
tangled bushes.