Mammy's shingle, and the noise of John Jay's loud weeping.




CHAPTER II.


It was a warm night in May. The bright moonlight shone in through the
chinks of the little cabin, and streamed across Ivy's face, where she
lay asleep on Mammy's big feather bed. Bud was gently snoring in his
corner of the trundle-bed below, but John Jay kicked restlessly beside
him. He could not sleep with the moonlight in his eyes and the frogs
croaking so mournfully in the pond back of the house. To begin with, it
was too early to go to bed, and in the second place he wasn't a bit
sleepy.

Mammy sat on a bench just outside of the door, with her elbows on her
knees. She was crooning a dismal song softly to herself,--something
about

"Mary and Martha in deep distress,
A-grievin' ovah brer Laz'rus' death."

It gave him such a creepy sort of feeling that he stuck his fingers in
his ears to shut out the sound. Thus barricaded, he did not hear slow
footsteps shuffling up the path; but presently the powerful fumes of a
rank pipe told of an approaching visitor. He took his fingers from his
ears and sat up.