It was not yet dawn when he roused the negroes. The boat lay quiet now; the river was over its disturbance of the evening before. Since its origin deep in past ages the river had pulled down too many shores, swallowed too many strips of land to be long concerned over its latest work. Yellow and deep and terrible, on it ran, remorseless and unremembering. The boat on the edge of the 63swamp, in the circle of projecting root and snag, lay quiet. Above and around it hung lifeless from the boughs the grey moss. Bough and moss, there was made a vast tracery through which showed the primrose sky, cold, quiet, infinitely withdrawn. Looking down the stream, all that was missed was Cape Jessamine. The yellow water rolled over that.

“There was a bayou a mile or two back,” said Edward. “The one on which stood ’Rasmus’s house. It ran north and south and the road we. . . Read More