"Mother," he said, as he bent down and kissed her, "I'm going."

Her head dropped quickly to the work in her lap, but she said nothing,
and he went quickly out again.




IV


It was growing dusk outside. Chickens were going to roost with a great
chattering in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged
darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies
were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the
twilight sounds of the farm--the lowing of cattle, the bleating of
calves at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker
of horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous
thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain--for that was the way the horse
got his name, being as black as a crow and, as Bob claimed, always
knowing when falling weather was at hand and speaking his prophecy by
stamping in his stall. He could hear Basil noisily making his way to the
barn. As he walked through the garden toward the old family graveyard,
he could still hear the boy, and a prescient tithe of the pain, that he
felt would strike him in full some day, smote him so sharply now that he
stopped a moment to listen, with one hand quickly raised to his
forehead. Basil was whistling--whistling joyously. Foreboding touched
the boy like the brush of a bird's wing, and death and sorrow were as
remote as infinity to him. At the barn-door the lad called sharply: