Daddy Isaac's Prayer

I

DADDY ISAAC stooped as he came out of his low cabin door, then straightened his fragile six-feet-two into the defiant erectness that was his habitual bearing. He aided his steps, which were slow, short, and painful, by a slender stick of poplar. In the late afternoon sun his face, spare and firm in line, shone with a blackness richer than ebony; its lustre was that of age-worn mahogany. A faint tegument of graywhite hair, soft as wool, covered his head. His eyes were so dead gray in color that anyone who met him for the first time would have thought him blind — but would have been mistaken. Age had left his faculties singularly unimpaired, even as it had failed to fossilize his spirit.

Along the wooded lane, wide enough for a wagon but little traveled except on foot, that led from Camellia Quarters to the Neighborhood Road, he made his way, effort patent in his brief, deliberate advances and the recuperative pauses between. Boughs, almost meeting overhead, softened the brilliant glow of the setting sun; in that red-gold light nothing seemed sharp, clearly defined.

Across the Neighborhood Road from the crude gate that led to Camellia Quarters sprawled the crazy structure of Nehemiah African Methodist Episcopal Church. Daddy Isaac shuffled through the thick sand of the road and lowered himself, tightening his lips but not groaning, to a sitting position on the second of the three steps. Every afternoon at about this time, unless he was too weak to walk, he contrived to come to this place for a period of contemplation. The purpose and the hope which led him to do this were as unusual as they were pertinacious. His lips moved in prayer, and the tenor of that prayer was not orthodox.

This evening as the old man sat on the church steps his keen ears interrupted his inner spell to inform him that someone was approaching on the Neighborhood Road. Two hundred yards away a robust figure strode toward him. One glance in that direction was enough to sever abruptly Daddy Isaac’s communion with the unseen. All his being snapped taut in longcherished hatred and rebelliousness against wrongs unrighted.

The newcomer was a Caucasian, although the South Carolina sun had burned him as brown as a mulatto. There was an air of beefiness about him, and, as he drew near, the fading evening light revealed a countenance coarse and brutish.

He walked up to Daddy Isaac, who raised himself tremblingly to his feet, leaning heavily on the poplar. The ancient Negro had been accustomed to stand in the presence of white folks since shortly after the day he was born, ‘ fo’teen yeahs befo’ freedom come,’ in a tiny cabin on neighboring Red bird Hall. Inwardly, however, he reserved toward this white man a feeling of complete independence armored with contempt.

‘Well, old man,’ exclaimed the newcomer, ‘you can still get about for anything but work. Where the hell was Mary yesterday? I had some peapicking and sent her word. Is she too lazy to steal you a skirtful of peas?’

‘I mighty sick yestiddy, Mista Haynes, ’ Daddy Isaac replied, his voice obviously under difficult control. ‘She d’ go Plantersville get me some med’cine.’ It was significant that he said ‘Mista,’ using neither the respectful ‘Maussa’ nor ‘Maus,’ which would have conveyed affection. ‘Mista’ was a word he had learned in the past twenty years, and he reserved it for white trash.

‘Well, she lost forty cents pay and what she could steal,’ Haynes rejoined. ‘You’re all alike. You bellyache about starvation, and you’re too damned lazy to work when it’s offered.’

‘I mighty sick yestiddy,’ Daddy Isaac repeated; and he continued to mutter the same words in an unintelligible refrain.

‘And by the way,’ the white man interrupted him, ‘if I catch you hanging around Honey Tree while Mr. Burdon is down here, I’ll see that you get thrown off Camellia for good. You’re nothing but a loafing nuisance.’ With that, he turned and walked on down the road.

Daddy Isaac did not sit again. While darkness settled about him, he stood fighting down the anger that stirred poison in his veins and dizzied his head. In his youth he had been notable for temper; notable, too, for vigor and the ability to get what he wanted, and for an unfailing way with the white people. Now, in a sudden access of weariness, he told himself that he was ‘jus’ a wo’n-out, no-’count nigger,’ helpless in a situation that involved fundamental necessities for himself and his neighbors.

Haynes was superintendent of Camellia, Redbird Hall, and Honey Tree — three plantations bought five years before by Joshua Burdon, a Cincinnati millionaire. The Negroes on the places, living by some mysterious alchemy in what remained of the old ‘streets’ of slave-quarter days, suffered the extreme hardships of absentee landlordism. Daddy Isaac did not believe that Burdon wanted his tenants to starve. He permitted them to dwell housefree, and charged them only the customary land rent of one third of the scanty corn and cotton they were able to raise; the older Negroes he allowed an acre, exempt of all toll, for a garden. There was nothing for these wards to do but scratch what they could from the poor soil, maintaining a precarious existence by snatching at odd jobs around the ‘Big Houses’ or by serving as guides when the Northerners came South to hunt ducks in the creeks and marshes.

Daddy Isaac was sure in his own mind that Mr. Burdon sent money for the Negroes on his plantations, and that most of it went into Haynes’s pocket. The superintendent was a typical example of what the darkies call ‘po‘ buckra.’ Superior to no creature, he must find someone to bully. His dogs hated him. No Southerner would have entrusted Negroes to his care.

With an effort, Daddy Isaac put all this out of his mind. He looked up at the sky, where the Tuscan gold of the clouds was giving way to the mysterious annunciation of night. Gray merged into violet, and as the violet deepened the stars appeared.

The old man shivered and shook his head. His purpose in coming to Nehemiah was not to be fulfilled. Murmuring once more his private and perhaps presumptuous prayer, he slowly crossed the road and passed up the lane that led to the Quarters.

II

Mrs. Drew, in a summery dress suited to the warm October day, her brown hair and lively face more than half concealed by a flapping straw hat, came suddenly upon a picture that would have delighted the eye of a painter. She had leased the old overseer’s cottage at neighboring Barondel for the winter, and this morning chance and curiosity had led her to turn into Camellia Lane.

The ancient before her was incredible. He sat on a rickety chair, underneath a solitary cherry tree that had already lost its leaves. A wooden shelf, one end tacked to the tree trunk and the other to a flimsy upright, extended before him, and, in evident annoyance, he tapped against the plank with a corncob pipe. Around the tree spread a yellow, untidy half-acre of what the dry summer had decreed to be a futile corn crop.

Daddy Isaac rose when he saw the visitor. He guessed at once who she was. News of new white folks, and of the doings of old and new, travels swiftly through the Negro community. What you have for breakfast, and what you let the cook have, become matters of almost instant knowledge, with consequent shrewd appraisal, and the verdict is in by noon.

Mrs. Drew watched the picturebook character before her as his expression changed in a twinkling from pipe-tapping annoyance to an aspect of welcome and friendliness. He won to his feet with noticeable effort, snatching off a ridiculous half-hat while he used his other hand to lean on his stick. He inclined his head once with a certain dignity, and tried ineffectually to pull in his toes, whose bareness, she rightly divined, he held to be a form of disrespect. She left the path and stepped under the tree.

‘Good morning, uncle,’ she greeted him. Daddy Isaac knew from this appellation that she was native to Georgia, Alabama, or the westward, not to South Carolina.

‘Good mawnin’, maum, good mawnin’,’ was his response. ‘Mighty nice, mighty nice, indeed, for you come see an ol’ nigger. I been tryin’ git over Barondel pay my respec’, but my health ain’ de spryes’. You’ll ’scuse me, maum.’

From the conversation that ensued, Mrs. Drew learned a number of things — among them, the cause of the irritated pipe-tapping that she had interrupted.

‘Do your neighbors help you?’ she had asked, after the hardness of the old man’s way of life had been set forth in homely detail.

‘Help?’ Daddy Isaac’s scorn curled his lip. ‘Dey’s no respec’ fo’ de aged any mo’, maum, an’ little help fo’ de helpless.’ A thin hand pointed contemptuously down the row of cabins. ‘You see dat las’ house? Man name’ Gatson live dere. He wuk, his wife wuk. He mighty pious, take de collection in de Methodis’ chu’ch. But dey ain’ no compassion in him. In t’ree year, since I been struck, he ain’ gi’ me so much ez a mess o’ greens.

‘An’ de chillun!’ The speaker warmed to his complaint. ‘De chillun takes after dey pa’s and ma’s. In de ol’ days dey say “Yassuh” and “Yassum.” Now dey makes mock.

‘Jus’ now I been settin’ here cravin’ smoke. I ain’ had tobacco fo’ t’ree day. Dat Gatson’s boy come by. “Ax yo’ pa,” I say, “kin he sen’ me pipeful tobacco.” He laugh an’ he run on home. Dey known I cain’ catch ’em since I been struck. If I catch ’em, I discipline ’em.’ He gripped the poplar stick and brandished it in a significant gesture.

Mrs. Drew learned, too, that Daddy Isaac’s cabin was empty of food. She could not make up her mind whether she was drawing the information out of the old man or whether, bit by bit, it was being skillfully paraded for her enlightenment.

And she came to know, finally, the consuming preoccupation of this patriarch in the evening of his life, the secret of his daily visits to the church.

‘Close on seventy year,’ the ancient told her, ‘I wuk ev’y wukday o’ my life. I d’ had positions of ’sponsibility, since way back when Maus Huger own Redbird Hall. In all dem year’ — he drew himself erect — ‘ I ain’ ax nothin’, nobody.

‘But ’bout fo’ year ago de misery come — in dis laig here.’ Daddy Isaac touched the offending member. ‘It come bad. I move Camellia to gyarden fo’ myse’f, and raise little cotton an’ corn on shares. I still gyarden, wid one han’ an’ one laig. Ma’y — dat’s my wife — do whut she can wid outside wuk, w’en she can git it.

‘I am’ got no complaint. I trus’ in de Lawd all dese year, and he set my ways in de ways of plenty. But ev’ybody gits ol’. Thu ev’yt’ing ’at come, I got one prayer, an’ I pray it all de time.’

He paused. He was talking almost to himself now. Mrs. Drew was afraid he would not continue.

‘All my life,’ the old man resumed, tilting his head and looking into the blue sky, ‘I been follower ob de Lawd. He been wid me. Maus Huger gone. Redbird Hall gone. De place where I born gone. I ain’ got no yearthly place, dat I love, to die in. T’ree year ago, September sebenteen, I go to de ’tructed meetin’ at Ebenezer. I pray to de Lawd let me die in His house. Dat’s de time I been struck. I lay ’tween de benches, dey tell me, twenty minutes ’fo’ some o’ de brethren foun’ me an’ ca’ied me outside. De Lawd doan’ let me die outside. He hear my prayer dat much. Now, ev’y ebenin’, I walks to Nehemiah Chu’ch, down de lane, and sets on de stoop. Ef I feel de Lawd call, I go inside. He ain’ call yet.’

‘Maybe you still have work to do here,’ Mrs. Drew said. ‘Would you like for me to bring you a basket of things after lunch?’

‘Thanky, maum. Thanky.’ Daddy Isaac’s eye brightened, but his voice, scarcely more than a mumble, held weariness.

‘What would you like most?’

‘Anyt’ing, maum.’ He managed a smile. ‘Anyt’ing come in handy where dey ain’ nothin’.’

Mrs. Drew stepped into the lane again and started toward the road. A few yards away she turned for a last glimpse. The ancient still stood, deep in reverie, by the cherry tree. He was aroused by her bright face, under the big hat.

‘I mos’ly smokes Jawge Washin’ton,’he called.

III

Muttering at the children who pestered him, and gesturing with the poplar, Daddy Isaac made his way to his yard. Mary asked him eager questions, confident that ‘ de Ol’ Man’ had been ‘politickin’,’ but his only response was to grumble under his breath about the inconsequence of women. He bowed his head to pass under the low lintel. Inside the cabin he lay down, clothed, on the varicolored quilt, faded to harmony, that covered the bed. In the cavernous fireplace, three or four small sticks smouldered among ashes. The fire was always kept burning. Daddy Isaac never seemed to be warm enough, even in summer.

His body relaxed, inert, but his mind would not rest. The troubles of the Negroes on Camellia, Redbird Hall, Honey Tree, weighed heavily upon him. He was black-bitter in his heart toward Haynes, Joshua Burdon’s superintendent.

As he lay suspended thus in reflection, it seemed only a few minutes until Mary whispered excitedly, ‘Git up, Ol’ Man. De lady d’ come, wid er basket.’

Daddy Isaac was at the doorway, bobbing his head in welcome, when Mrs. Drew reached the gate. He contrived a queer noise in his throat, directed toward the chickens in the yard, and they scattered from the path.

‘Take de basket, Ma’y, take de basket,’ he commanded. ‘What’s de matter wid you?’ He cast a vituperative eye at a few ragged pickaninnies who had gathered outside the fence. ‘How come,’ he inquired of his benefactress, ‘ you did n’ set dat basket at de foot o’ de lane and have some o’ dese ’scallions fetch it for you? I ’clare, de chillun in dis street ain’ wuth shootin’. Lettin’ a lady ca’y a basket!’

‘It’s all right,’ Mrs. Drew reassured him. ‘ I came most of the way in a car.’

Daddy Isaac hobbled down the one step to the ground and bowed the visitor in. Then he made the awkward ascent again, Mary pressing close behind with her burden. Mary’s eyes gleamed; her face shone, a polished gargoyle. Every line of it showed that she had to fight hard to repress her voluble nature; nothing but fear of ‘de Ol’ Man ’ kept back a torrential flow of thanks.

‘’Scuse appearance, maum. ’Scuse appearance,’ Daddy Isaac apologized, tugging at a chair whose parts were as heterogeneous as the fence outside.

Mrs. Drew took in with a quick glance this main chamber of the cabin. It needed repair worse than any habitation she had ever seen. She sensed the excitement in her hosts. Mary’s consisted principally of greediness. She was unable to keep her eyes off the basket, and her hands washed themselves with eagerness. Daddy Isaac, in excellent control of himself, seemed to move in a trance. Watching him, Mrs. Drew had the illusion that the frail old fellow might suddenly disintegrate through internal combustion and disappear — pouf! — out of mortal ken, like a genie of Andrew Lang’s.

‘No, I can’t stay,’ Mrs. Drew declined the chair. ‘The basket can wait till to-morrow. I ’ll come back to see if I forgot anything you need.’

‘De Lawd bless you, maum,’Daddy Isaac said. ‘I know He sent you.’

Mary escorted the guest through the gate and a few yards down the lane. ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs’ of gratitude, compliments and adjurations to the Lord for good fortune, bubbled from her lips. She nearly bobbed her head off. Daddy Isaac remained on the doorstep in patriarchal benediction. His lip curled at Mary’s fawning, but he held his peace.

IV

Thanks over and benefactor sped, the contents of the basket were arrayed on the table in scattered profusion. Flour, sugar, salt, rice, coffee, bread, a pound of butter, — that was luxury!— canned soups, jellies, a dozen oranges. Four packs of George Washington. At the bottom was evidence that Mrs. Drew knew Negroes, or that she had been expertly advised: Daddy Isaac eyed with a sigh of satisfaction two generous slabs of salted and very fat bacon.

‘Put a piece de side meat on to boil,’he commanded, ‘an’ some rice; an’ make some sugar surrup.’

Mary freshened the fire and did as she was bid, while her husband lay again on the bed and watched the dust motes. He did not seem to care much whether he ate or not; yet he rose quickly enough when the meal was ready, and he did feel stronger with the food inside him.

As he had been eating, a fixed purpose had slowly formed in the old man’s mind. If asked, he could not have given a reason for what he planned to do; it was simply that something drew him, irresistibly, where he was going. Mary, eyeing him with the wonder he habitually inspired in her, showed signs of distress when he set the battered fragment of felt hat on his head.

‘Where you d’ go?’ she demanded. ‘Dat sun buhn you up, Ol’ Man. Better lay down an’ res’ yo’self some mo’.’

‘I d’ go out,’ Daddy Isaac informed her with dignity, and hobbled his way to the gate. Mary watched him turn up the lane, away from the Neighborhood Road. Then she herself went worriedly to the gate and looked after him. Past the other cabins he made painful progress — erect, uncompromising in his bearing, head bowed no whit beneath the hot sun. Children and others called to him, but he did not answer. At the ruins of the former carriage house he turned again and disappeared from sight. Mary shook her head, went back into the cabin, and gave annihilating attention to a glass of grape jelly, muttering between mouthfuls.

The road that Daddy Isaac now traversed passed between a field of cotton and a field of corn. To the right, among a clump of trees, leaned the decaying remains of the cabin where he had been born; but he gave it neither glance nor thought. He was walking, now, on the land of Redbird Hall. A venerable scarecrow, animated by only as much motion as a child’s toy running down, the old man dragged his feet through the dust till he came to a point where the road bent to the left to skirt an acre of plum trees, black and snaky-limbed with age, knotted, gnarled, untrimmed, once the pride of some horticulturist over whose grave South Carolina wild flowers now grew.

Daddy Isaac did not turn with the road. Instead, he directed his steps to the right, and entered another grove. Here, though the trees were not close together, grape and other woodland vines wove a leafy canopy overhead so that no ray of the sun came through. In this spot Daddy Isaac paused.

Before him the earth bore the outlines of haphazard mounds, irregularly placed. Some were new, others had worn away under Southern rains, and, instead of mounds, were now hollows, filled with last year’s leaves. Time had obliterated many. A few wooden headboards lifted crude inscriptions, and scattered about were lares that would have interested an archæologist — favorite bits of colored glassware, razors, shaving mugs, plates, knives and forks, always the last medicine bottle and its accompanying spoon. This was God’s Quarter Acre, a burying ground for the plantation Negroes.

In the verdant gloom, luminous yet dim, the old man did not look at the gound’s pathetic relics. He knew the place well. For three years he had not attended funerals at any of the plantations, the excitement being adjudged too much for him, but he would often come here alone to meditate. The place was the last remaining link that bound him to the past. Every Negro bom on Peedee is carried back, wherever he may die, and put to rest in his native soil. It is a privilege as old as the affiliation of white and black along the river.

Daddy Isaac raised his eyes to the translucent green above. The foliage seemed to part before the penetration of his gaze, and once again he saw the river, bright with the barges of plantation owners coming to Prince Frederick’s for Sunday service. There were as many as twelve paddlers to a craft, each master and his family at ease on a canopied dais, the men brilliantly uniformed. Those manning the largest boat were liveried in white and gold; as a boy, Daddy Isaac had always envied the six-foot Gullah who was coxswain to that crew.

Then the old man saw himself, in no mean uniform of blue, with a whip in his hand, seated high on a carriage at the creek landing before Redbird Hall. Here, with neighborly courtesy, Maus Huger made all from up and down the river his guests; had them driven grandly to Prince Frederick’s, and welcomed them back to dinner.

Other pictures passed through the old man’s mind. A day on Waccamaw Neck, when, only a boy, he had gone as footman with Maus Huger to Brook Green, to await news of ‘Young Maus,’ who was defending the beach at Pawley’s Island against a Federal landing party. Ol’ Maus and Colonel Widdecomb, master of Brook Green, standing at the big gate and staring down the dusty road. A rider who came waving his hat. Then, the slow and grimy march of the gray-clad men, weary from three days of fighting, but happy because they had repulsed the attack. Young Maus laughing, with his right sleeve empty. The great dinner served at Brook Green that night to one hundred and thirty guests, with gleaming gold plate and foreign wines. Ol’ Maus unable to take his eyes off Young Maus’s empty sleeve.

Many feasts and much gleaming tableware illumined a succession of visions, replacing the branches and lianas of the unpretentious burying ground: gardens bright with magnolia, japonica, azalea; gracious women who spoke to Daddy Isaac with the same grave kindliness they accorded their children; fine horses, bright harness; rice barns a-chatter with the excitement of harvest; the light laughter and dancing eyes of the young wife he had had long before he knew Mary.

Daddy Isaac stood among his people until the visions faded. Then he made his way slowly back to the road and plodded homeward, a scarecrow toy with faulty spring, under the hot sun.

V

Mary was informed of her husband’s approach by one of Gatson’s children. ‘Ol’ Man d’ come! ’ the breathless urchin called through the cabin door, and then stood there ogling the oranges on the table. Mary shooed him away with impatient skirts, and hung over the gate until Daddy Isaac came up. His appearance did not reassure her. There was a grayishness about his face; the rims of his eyes were red; he breathed heavily.

The exaltation he had experienced at Redbird burying ground had passed off and given place to a nervous, irritating preoccupation with his own troubles and those of his neighbors — the perennial enigma of Joshua Burdon, remote, and Joshua Burdon’s superintendent, at hand, in authority. And there were new physical pains that harried him.

Daddy Isaac made another meal of side meat. He noticed the empty jelly glass, demanded if there was another, and emptied it. He filled his pipe with fresh, pungent tobacco and lit it with a splinter from the fire. Then he reached again for his battered hat.

Mary watched him anxiously. ‘ Cain’ you res’ yo’self, nohow?’ she asked uneasily.

’I d’ go set awhile Nehemiah,’ he explained quietly.

The journey to Redbird had worn away the afternoon. Long fingers of light now slanted from the west, but the feel of evening was in the air. The hush that divides the life of the day from the life of the night had settled upon the earth. Daddy Isaac made slower progress than usual through the glade to Neighborhood Road. Before he reached it, the sun had already dropped below the horizon. He eased himself laboriously to the church steps, and, as always in that place, a measure of peace stole over him.

He had not been sitting there long when a man came walking briskly up the road from the direction of Honey Tree and the Georgetown Highway. Daddy Isaac’s keen ears told him that the tread was not that of Haynes, nor would Haynes be coming from that direction. As the walker emerged from the shadows into the open space before the church, the light from the sun’s afterglow revealed to Daddy Isaac a small man past middle age, with a neatly trimmed moustache; he carried his hat in his hand, and his bald head gleamed rosily against the dark background of the trees. Daddy Isaac identified him immediately, and rose to his feet. At the same instant a project that was daring, almost fantastic, born of the energy that had kept him going all day, took possession of the old man’s mind.

‘Maus Burdon!’ he called, in a voice at once persuasive and keyed high with excitement. ‘Maus Burdon! Could you, please, Maus, step dis way jus’ one secon’?’

Joshua Burdon turned and came toward the church.

‘ Is it good for you to be out with the dew about to fall? ’ he asked pleasantly, still trying to recall where he had seen this old darky.

Daddy Isaac paid no attention to the inquiry. He was in desperate haste. Any moment might be too late.

‘You doan’ know me, Maus Burdon,’ the words tumbled forth, ‘ but I knows you. Talked wid you once, two year ’go. You done promise fix my roof. Ne’ min’ that. My name Laseigne — Isaac Laseigne. White folks’ ways is white folks’ ways, and cullud folks’ is cullud folks’. I doan mix in white folks’ business. But dis time I got t’ings inform you is business o’ white an’ black. My business, lots folks’ business, yo’ business, too. Please, Maus Burdon, I wants you, please, do somethin’ fo’ me.’

‘ Why,’ said Burdon, a little doubtful at this torrent, ‘if you’ll take up whatever is worrying you with Mr. Haynes, the superintendent — ’

‘Please, Maus Burdon, please!’ Daddy Isaac nearly fell off the step. ‘I’m goan show you mo’ bout yo’ ’fairs on Peedee dan you learn in all de time you own de plantations.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ the Northerner asked. There was a compelling quality in this ancient that he could not withstand.

Daddy Isaac pointed a trembling finger toward the open door of the church. Even as he did so, his ears detected a familiar sound up the road to the left. Another minute and it would be too late.

‘I want you d’ go in dere,’ he whispered hoarsely, and emphasized the urgency of his request by hobbling up to the doorway and extending his arm inside. ‘Quick, Maus Burdon, quick! Jus’ step in here, and doan say nothin’, and listen. Please, Maus, please.’

Joshua Burdon had been making quick decisions all his life. He had never declined a proffer of information about any of his projects. He was known, in the East, as a good listener. This old darky who accosted him so strangely spoke with conviction; it could do no harm to humor him. Without hesitation Burdon stepped past the old man into Nehemiah Church and blended with the shadows inside.

Daddy Isaac fought for breath, fought for balance, fought to clear his brain for the second act of the drama he had conceived. Third acts he left to God.

VI

It was Haynes who came down the road from the left. Daddy Isaac had recognized his footsteps. The Negro’s voice was propitiatory as he called out: ‘Evenin’, Mista Haynes, evenin’. I likes ax you somethin’.’

‘Well, what is it?’ The heavy-set figure of the superintendent drew near and paused.

‘You remember, ’bout two year ago, I d’ go up Honey Tree an’ ax Maussa Burdon fix my roof?’

‘Yes.’ Haynes’s anger rose. ‘And I remember what I told you afterward. Mr. Burdon does n’t want niggers hanging round, and it’s my job to keep them away. If you go up there again, I ’ll throw you off Camellia. I told you that then, and I tell you now for the last time.’

Daddy Isaac, standing on the top step, drew himself up even straighter than his normal carriage. His veins seemed bursting with the enormity of the offense he was about to commit.

‘T’ief!’he shrilled. ‘T’ief! You t’iefs f’om de cullud folks. You t’iefs f’om Maus Burdon. He tol’ me he goan give you de money fo’ my roof. I b’lieves he gi’ it to you. I b’lieves he gi’ you lots money fo’ de Quarters. Not a cabin been fix in all dese year. Not a good meal been et on Redbird, Camellia, Honey Tree, since you been ’tendent. You t’iefs wages, you t’iefs —’

There was only one way to answer

this, and Haynes leaped quickly up the steps, his heavy hand raised, his fist clenched.

Daddy Isaac did not flinch. His eyes looked steadily into those of the white man; yet a change came over the expression of those eyes, and Haynes, seeing the change in close proximity, stayed his hand.

The Negro started to fall forward and, trying to check himself, stabbed wildly in the air with his poplar staff. His feet went out from under him; the staff clattered down the steps; and he fell, thumping, across the threshold.

Haynes bent over and pulled roughly at Daddy Isaac’s shirt. He made as if to kick the motionless figure; but the singular inertness of that body which had been so vigorous, so insolent, a moment before made him pause. Instead, he exhaled his breath sharply in contempt, then turned on his heel and strode away down the road.

A minute or so later, Joshua Burdon appeared out of the shadows of the church. He, too, bent over the old Negro, and felt above the heart. Then he stepped carefully over the prostrate figure and slowly retraced his way toward Honey Tree. He made no effort to catch up with Haynes. He was not yet ready to talk to him. He wanted to have his thoughts marshaled into clear, definite, and final form for that conversation.

All the stars came out, in a sky that swam with blue. The lively small sounds of night swished in the trees and grass. A full moon poured light, as from a yellow bowl, into Camellia Lane.

Daddy Isaac’s legs sprawled over the steps of Nehemiah Church, where they would be seen when Mary, or Gatson’s children, came presently to look. But the head and shoulders of the old man lay across the threshold where he had prayed to be, in the house of God.