"And so you decided to sell yourself--" began the girl.

"Yas'm." Uncle Noah's voice had grown apologetic. "Yoh see, Miss, I'se de only thing whut I really owns 'cept dis yere ol' stickpin.

Cose I'se free now, but I reckons if I has a mind to sell maself de Norf can't stop me. I'se sellin' ma own property." There was a gentle defiance in the old negro's argument.

"And you--you wouldn't accept a--a loan?" The girl flushed.

The negro's hurt eyes were answer enough. Uncle Noah had not lived in an atmosphere permeated with Fairfax pride without feeling its influence.

"I'se not askin' foh charity, Miss," he averred stubbornly. "I'se a-sellin' sumthin'. I reckons if yoh buy me, Miss, an' yoh lemme go back an' stay Christmas wif ol' Ma.s.sa, I'll sell maself cheap. Yoh see I'se a-plannin' first to buy a turkey whut'll take Job's place on de platter, an' den to give de Ma.s.sa a gran' Christmas wif de rest o' de money what I gits foh maself, savin' out jus' enough to buy ma ol'

turkey an' come to yoh first day after Christmas. It'll be hard to leave ol' Ma.s.sa and Mis', but I reckons it's jus' gotta be done."

Uncle Noah gulped and blinked, and there was a glimmer of wet lashes about the warm gray eyes that had won his heart.

The girl was silent so long that Uncle Noah shifted uneasily; but at last she spoke a little tremulously. "For what price will you sell yourself?" she asked, and Uncle Noah never doubted but that she regarded the purchase in the same light in which he himself had viewed it.

He turned about for his purchaser's thorough inspection, his bald head above the fringe of white wool about it glistening in the lamplight.

"Do yoh think I'se wuth, say, twenty-five dollahs?" he queried, regarding her fixedly over his spectacles.

The girl touched her throat with an unconscious gesture. "Yes, you are," she cried impulsively; "you are indeed!" And before Uncle Noah had quite time to adjust himself to the joy of his unique sale the girl thrust a roll of bills into his hands and disappeared through the station door.

IV

Christmas Intrigue

IV

Uncle Noah hobbled after her. His new mistress had quite forgotten to tell him where to deliver himself when his Christmas with the Colonel was over. But when he reached the door she was eagerly greeting a man who had just alighted from a waiting carriage. Uncle Noah could but dimly see him, but as the genial voice reached his ears he halted in the shadow quite content. It was Major Verney. The fact that the Colonel's old friend and neighbor had driven in from Fernlands to meet the radiant lady whose great gray eyes, Uncle Noah now recalled, had had the Verney look which endeared the owner of Fernlands to all who knew him, seemed to the watching negro a direct interposition of Providence. A scant mile of cottonfields lay between the two plantations, and, Christmas over, Uncle Noah had but to trudge across the fields to deliver himself to the Major's guest.

"And, Ruth," concluded Major Verney in laughing reprimand, "you have kept me waiting. Why, child, the Northern Express came in fifteen minutes ago."

Uncle Noah did not catch the girl's reply as Major Verney a.s.sisted her into the carriage and they drove rapidly away.

The old darky beamed happily after the retreating carriage; then, with his hand tightly clasped about the precious roll of greenbacks for which he had so willingly bartered his freedom, he began a tour of the Cotesville stores. When at length he staggered into the big grocery store for his final purchases he was laden with a miscellaneous collection of Christmas packages from which he was cheerfully disentangled by the bulky proprietor himself. Uncle Noah made a critical pilgrimage about the store, pausing at last before a counter where the proprietor had laid out a number of turkeys for the careful inspection of this beaming shopper about to select an understudy for the incomparable Job. A very respectable fowl was presently mantled in brown paper and laid beside the other bundles, along with sundry bags of cranberries and apples, oranges and nuts, celery and raisins, cigars for the Colonel, a box of candy for Mrs. Fairfax, huge bunches of holly and mistletoe, Christmas wreaths for the windows, and a great bag of cracked corn for the reprieved tyrant gloomily roosting in the ruined hut.

As Uncle Noah carefully counted out the money required to purchase this astonishing outlay the bulky proprietor tasked pleasantly: "Uncle Noah, do you happen to know where I can get a good woman to scrub up my store every morning?"

Uncle Noah fingered his scarfpin uncertainly. "How much do yoh pay foh de work?" he queried.

"Fifty cents a day."

The negro leaned forward in tense expectancy. "Do yoh 'spect I could do it?" he demanded excitedly.

The proprietor, secretly astonished by the old man's manner, nodded a.s.suringly. "Why, yes, you could easily; it's nothing much; but the Colonel--"

"Colonel doan have foh to know," exclaimed Uncle Noah. "I comes yere mornin's foh he's up--an I 'clare to goodness, sah, I needs de money mos' powahful."

The proprietor was easy-going and too phlegmatic to harbor curiosity.

So the bargain was straightway sealed under a pledge of deepest secrecy.

Somewhat confused by the unusual series of events, Uncle Noah, his eyes shining with a strange excitement, started for the door, quite forgetting the countless packages on the counter.

The proprietor recalled him with a hearty laugh. "Uncle Noah," he called, "you've forgotten one or two little bundles here."

With a smothered gasp the old negro hurried back. But try as they would, room for all the numerous bundles could not be found. The proprietor energetically tucked bundles into all of Uncle Noah's pockets, piled them tower fashion upon his arms, and even hung a collection bound together with a string over his shoulder, while Uncle Noah wheezed and groaned and struggled to find new and unsuspected storage s.p.a.ce in his clothes, but still there remained bundles and bundles at which Uncle Noah gazed over his spectacles in growing discomfiture.

"Whut am I a-goin' to do?" he demanded. "I nevah can come all de way hack yere in de snow wif dese yere ol' legs o' mine."

"Get one of them station cabs," advised the grocer; and so, after considerable discussion, the bundle problem was solved.

Ten minutes later Uncle Noah entered a hired carriage for the first time in his life. At the town florist's he rapped a timid signal to the driver to stop, and, glowing with antic.i.p.ation, spryly shuffled into the warm, scented air of the little shop. Here, to the smiling clerk's astonishment, he ordered a bunch of violets to be delivered Christmas morning to "de young lady wif de gray eyes whut's at Major Verney's."

"Surely," smiled the clerk, "you don't want that on the card?"

But Uncle Noah was stubborn; more, he insisted on writing the inscription himself, his orthography quite as quaint as his penmanship, and so the card went to be read by the wonderful gray eyes in the morning.

Back through the snow in his rickety carriage rolled Uncle Noah, rattling home along the snowy road down which he had trudged in the early evening, chuckling now intermittently in a mental rehearsal of his new plan.

"Fifty cents a day!" he thought, "an' to-morrow I'se a-goin' to slip over to Fernlands in de mornin' an' ask her to lemme buy maself back on de 'stallment plan. Mos' likely she'll take a dollar a week, an' wid all de rest o' dat grocer money ol' Mis' doan have to know whut de Colonel an' me is a-goin' through."

In accordance with Uncle Noah's whispered directions the cab crept gently up the driveway at Brierwood and paused at the kitchen door, where the driver, who had taken a great fancy to Uncle Noah, became transformed into a benevolent stevedore, tiptoeing in and out of the kitchen with the bundles which the old darky drew from the cavernous pit of the cab. Job's understudy came last, and Uncle Noah, tightly pressing the precious fowl in his arms, watched the carriage drive slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent depression over the a.s.sumed decapitation of Job.

Colonel Fairfax looked up inquiringly as he entered.

"I'se jus' come to tell yoh, sah," said Uncle Noah with a meaning glance at Mrs. Fairfax, "dat I has de turkey all ready foh de oven."

A faint red crept through the Colonel's skin, but he met the darky's eyes squarely. "Thank you, Uncle Noah!" he said, and the negro shuffled hurriedly away.

In his old rocking-chair by the kitchen fire Uncle Noah, alert and excited, waited until he heard the Colonel and Mrs. Fairfax go up to bed; then, chuckling to himself, he extinguished the kitchen lights, and, carrying one of his Christmas bundles, plodded across the field to Job's nocturnal hermitage. The light of a match revealed the tyrant roosting glumly on the summit of a ruined plowshare.

"I'se brought yoh a Christmas surprise, Ma.s.sa Job Fairfax," said Uncle Noah, and he sprinkled the floor of the hut thick with corn that the turkey might find it in the morning.

With his heart full of thanksgiving the negro plodded homeward through the snow. As he reached the old barn the great clock in the library struck twelve and faintly through the snowy air floated the distant silvery chimes of the Cotesville bells, clear and sweet, ringing in a Christmas morning.

Creeping to bed long after the first rooster had crowed Uncle Noah had sought the kitchen again with the sunrise, his tired eyes opening jubilantly upon a snapping cold Christmas morning radiant in gold and white. Downstairs cl.u.s.ters of holly and mistletoe festooned doors and windows, dotted the old-fashioned hanging lamps with spots of crimson, and crowned the family portraits with royal diadems, and evergreen wreaths hung in the windows--all the work of a wrinkled pair of faithful brown hands toiling while the world slept. In the library a blazing wood fire leaped and crackled, while in the dining-room the table was spread for breakfast. Certain long-needed articles of china, which had mysteriously disappeared from time to time since the autumn, dotted a tablecloth free from holes (a new one subjected to a severe laundry process during the night), and the napkins no longer resembled Ku-Klux masks. A great bowl of purple orchids glowed at Mrs. Fairfax's plate.

V

Fernlands