“O--o--h! Yo’ Tagger, Tag-g-e-r; you’d better come on here, ef you know what’s good for you,” called one of the women with a long, resounding echo that drowned the answer of the small voice that said he was on his way. A troop of little niggers came to the roadside pulling a wagon load of brush and bark gathered through the woods. They looked back and spied Esther on the coffins. With a wild yell the children, load and all, tumbled over the embankment, rolling over each other in the dust, screaming, “Mammy! mammy!” at the top of their voices, scrambling to their feet and running with might and main down the road. As Esther drew up to the wash-place, the little fellows were clinging frantically to the knees of their mothers. “It’s a little ha’nt blowin’ Gabel’s trumpet. Don’t let it ketch me! don’t let it ketch me!” “In de name ob de Lawd!” said one of the women, seeing what had caused the fright; “ain’t you all got de sense you was born wid? Don’t you know Miss Esther Powel, Marse Hardin’s granddaughter?” The eyes of the pickaninnies were blinded by the wads of wet aprons they had covered them with, and the sound of the wheels filled them with terror. “Dry up!” The big dripping hand pounded on their heads. “Scuse ’em, Miss Esther, you’d think dese youngun’s been fotch up wid wild injun’s.” “Tagger,” Esther called the boy, whose name, Montague, she had been responsible for. “Don’t you know me? I played for you to dance a jig for the young men who used to visit Will Curtis before he died. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?” Hearing her familiar voice, he slowly peeped out with scared eyes. “You little monkey. Dip me some water out of the spring.” She saw a long, yellow gourd hanging from a striped bough above their heads. “I want a drink.” He sprang up and snatched the gourd, and before she could say more, he was holding it up to her, standing on his tiptoes, grinning, as the tears ran down and stained his dusty face. “I am going to play at the University to-night,” she said, hanging back the gourd. “You don’ say? One of dem ’Varsity gemmen’s coming out to see Marse Will’s folks next week.” Tagger’s mother lived with the Curtises, whose home was just beyond the spring. “I’ll be bound, you beat ’em all dar if you does play to-night,” she said when she saw they were leaving. Bareheaded, Esther rode on, as long as the shade was over them, tying on her hat only when they got to the sunny way of the road. A man plowing in a cornfield, looked up as he stopped at the turn of the row. He gazed intently, rapping the line mechanically about his wrist. “What is her grandpa thinking of?” seeing it was Esther, whom he knew. “But she’d a gone in spite of hell and high water.” With this aloud to himself, he drew his shirt sleeve across the sweat on his brow and trudged back down the row, relieved.