"A mile out
of town I heard some one sloshing through the rain after me; it
was dark by that time and I couldn't see who it was, so I pulled
up and waited, and then I made out it was a woman. She spoke
when she was alongside the cart and says, 'Can you drive me on to
the Barony?' and it came to me it was the same woman I'd seen
leave the stage. When I got down to help her into the cart I saw
she was toting a child in her arms."
"What did the woman look like, Bob?" said Crenshaw.
"She wa'n't exactly old and she wa'n't young by no manner of
means; I remember saying to myself, that child ain't yo's, whose
ever it is. Well, sir, I was willing enough to talk, but she
wa'n't, she hardly spoke until we came to the red gate, when she
says, 'Stop, if you please, I'll walk the rest of the way.' Mind
you, she'd known without a word from me we were at the Barony.
She give me a dollar, and the last I seen of her she was hurrying
through the rain toting the child in her arms."
Mr. Crenshaw took up the narrative.
"The niggers say the old general almost had a fit when he saw
her. Aunt Alsidia let her into the house; I reckon if Joe had
been alive she wouldn't have got inside that door, spite of the
night!"
"Well?" said Bladen.
"When morning come she was gone, but the child done stayed
behind; we always reckoned the lady walked back to Fayetteville
sometime befo' day and took the stage. I've heard Aunt Alsidia
tell as how the old general said that morning, pale and shaking
like, 'You'll find a boy asleep in the red room; he's to be fed
and cared fo', but keep him out of my sight.
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