His name is
Hannibal Wayne Hazard.' That is all the general ever said on the
matter. He never would see the boy, never asked after him even,
and the boy lived in the back of the house, with the niggers to
look after him. Now, sir, you know as much as we know, which is
just next door to nothing."
The old general was borne across what had once been the west lawn
to his resting-place in the neglected acre where the dead and
gone of his race lay, and the record of the family was complete,
as far as any man knew. Crenshaw watched the grave take shape
with a melancholy for which he found no words, yet if words could
have come from the mist of ideas in which his mind groped vaguely
he would have said that for themselves the deeds of the Quintards
had been given the touch of finality, and that whether for good
or for evil, the consequences, like the ripple which rises from
the surface of placid waters when a stone is dropped, still
survived somewhere in the world.
The curious and the idle drifted back to the great house; then
the memory of their own affairs, not urgent, generally speaking,
but still of some casual interest, took them down the disused
carriage-way to the red gate and so off into the heat of the
summer day. Crenshaw's wagon, driven by Crenshaw's man, vanished
in a cloud of gray dust with the two old slaves, Aunt Alsidia and
Uncle Ben, who were being taken to the Crenshaw place to be cared
for pending the settlement of the Quintard estate.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25