An old negro, his sleep-wrinkled, shiny coat and paint-stained overalls
itchy from stubble acquired in a deserted barn, idled down the switching
track that ran behind the Judson lands. His scrubby gray beard was
stained with blackberries; his knees were gritty and dank from kneeling
beside the brook that slipped over the quartz ledges beside Billygoat
Hill. In doubtful cogitation he knocked cinder and chert clusters down
the steep fills, swinging his hickory stick with an air of ancient
mastery.
"Lawd bless me, look at dem long houses!" as he passed the lower end of
Hewintown.
A white man eyed him closely, a short man with a tarnished metal badge
on his ore-stained coat.
"Got any wu'k?"