“Far, far away,
Thar's whar my heart is turning ever,
Thar's whar the old folks stay.”
The two dusky scions of an emotional race, that had been wont to sweeten
its toil and condone its wrongs with music, sat wrapt and silent,
swaying with Jack's voice until they could burst in upon the chorus.
The jasmine vines trilled softly with the afternoon breeze; a slender
yellow-hammer, perhaps emulous of Jack, swung himself from an outer
spray and peered curiously into the room; and a few neighbors, gathering
at their doors and windows, remarked that “after all, when it came to
real singing, no one could beat those d----d niggers.”
The sun was slowly sinking in the rolling gold of the river when Jack
and Sophy started leisurely back through the broken shafts of light, and
across the far-stretching shadows of the cottonwoods. In the midst of
a lazy silence they were presently conscious of a distant monotonous
throb, the booming of the up boat on the river. The sound came
nearer--passed them, the boat itself hidden by the trees; but a trailing
cloud of smoke above cast a momentary shadow upon their path. The girl
looked up at Jack with a troubled face. Mr. Hamlin smiled reassuringly;
but in that instant he had made up his mind that it was his moral duty
to kill Mr. Edward Stratton.