On the evening after Mrs. Colbert’s departure for town, Till felt lonely and downcast. All day she had been busy and resolutely cheerful. Now, as the sun was going down behind the hills, she sat on the doorstep of her cabin watching the long twilight come on.

This was the first year she had ever missed the Easter trip to Winchester with her mistress. She was glad Nancy had been chosen, because it seemed to mean that Miss Sapphy’s unaccountable harshness toward the girl was melting. But deep in her heart Till felt slighted and left behind. It was always a great treat for her to stay in Judge Halstead’s town house, and to help serve at the dinner parties which Mrs. Halstead gave after Easter. The third sister, Mrs. Bushwell, who now owned Chestnut Hill, came to Winchester at that time, bringing her maid and coachman, and from them Till could hear about everything that had happened at home since last Easter; “home” being always Chestnut Hill.

This mill farm on Back Creek had never been home to Till. She liked, as she said to herself, to live among “folks,” not among poor farmers and backwoods people. The finer accomplishments she had learned from Mrs. Matchem, those of which she was most proud, had little chance here. Before the Mistress became an invalid, things were better. Then friends from Winchester often came to stay overnight or to spend a week; there was some satisfaction in keeping the brass and silver bright, the stores of bed linen and table linen bleached. In those days Miss Sapphy used to go back to Chestnut Hill almost every summer for a long visit with her sister, and Till went with her.

Sitting there on her doorstep and remembering happier times, Till found herself shivering. She got up and went into the cabin. When she came back, she had a wool-stuffed bed-quilt about her shoulders. On a still twilight in spring and summer, clouds of fleecy mist curled over the low meadow down where the mill dam was. All Till’s secret discontent with the Mill Farm she expressed by the quiet statement that it was “damp.” Even on a sunny wash-day the sheets were longer drying than they should be. In the fall the hoar frost was heavier here than over at Mrs. Blake’s place on the big road. When Till and the Mistress came back from their Easter fortnight in town, and no fires had been lighted in the parlour, they found damp spots on the English wall-paper.

“They’ve had moisture up here,” Miss Sapphy would remark cheerfully. “All the better for the early roses.” She would never admit that it was damper here than elsewhere.

But to Till the heavy atmosphere brought a heaviness of heart. She was not, under any circumstances, a gay darky. In early childhood, at Chestnut Hill, she had suffered a frightful shock. One night, lying in her trundle bed, she was watching her mother dress for the servants’ New Year’s party. She saw her mother’s finery catch fire from a candle; saw her, in flames, run screaming out into the winter wind. The poor woman was fatally burned before the men could overtake her and beat out the fire. As for the child, the negroes declared she had been struck dumb and would never speak again. She said not a word when they tried to comfort her, but looked at them with terrified eyes. Mrs. Matchem, the housekeeper, took Till up to the big house and put her into a cot in her own room. There, away from the emotional darkies, she began to sleep naturally again, and was soon a quick-witted, observant little girl, — but a grave and serious one. So was Mrs. Matchem serious. Till was devoted to her; strove to imitate her in speech and manner. Matchem impressed it upon her that there was all the difference in the world between doing things exactly right and doing them somehow-or-other. The little black girl would stand looking up at the tall Devonshire woman, taking these precepts devoutly to heart. To the sly whispers of the under servants that an easier way was just as good, she steeled herself as if the Bad Man himself were whispering in her ear.

After Captain Dodderidge died, and Miss Sapphy married and went out to Back Creek, her sister, Mrs. Bushwell, bought in Chestnut Hill. All Mrs. Bushwell’s interest was in the stables; she left the management of the house entirely to Matchem. Till stayed on, working under Matchem until she was fifteen. Then Sapphira Colbert made a trade for her.

One summer, when she drove down to Chestnut Hill for her yearly visit, Mrs. Colbert took with her a young negro who had a great knack with horses. For two winters sh............