The land was quite gray, the river pearl-colored, and the fireflies beginning to sparkle, when he rode through the home gates. In the dusk of the world, out of the deeper shadow of the surrounding trees, his house looked grimly upon him. The light had been at the side; all the front was stark and black with shuttered windows. He rode to the back of the house and hallooed to the slaves in the home quarter, where were lights and noisy laughter, and one deep voice singing in an unknown tongue. It was but a stone’s throw to the nearest cabin, and Haward’s call made itself heard above the babel. The noise suddenly lessened, and two or three negroes, starting up from the doorstep, hurried across the grass to horse and rider. Quickly as they came, some one within the house was beforehand with them. The door swung open; there was the flare of a lighted candle, and a voice cried out to know what was wanted. “Wanted!” exclaimed Haward. “Ingress into my own house is wanted! Where is Juba?” One of the negroes pressed forward. “Heah I is, Marse Duke! House all ready for you, but you done sont word”-- “I know,--I know,” answered Haward impatiently. “I changed my mind. Is that you, Saunderson, with the light? Or is it Hide?” The candle moved to one side, and there was disclosed a large white face atop of a shambling figure dressed in some coarse, dark stuff. “Neither, sir,” said an expressionless voice. “Will it please your Honor to dismount?” Haward swung himself out of the saddle, tossed the reins to a negro, and, with Juba at his heels, climbed the five low stone steps and entered the wide hall running through the house and broken only by the broad, winding stairway. Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle all was in darkness; the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his tread. On either hand squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of large, empty rooms, and down the stair came a wind that bent the weak flame. The negro took the light from the hand of the man who had opened the door, and, pressing past his master, lit three candles in a sconce upon the wall. “Yo’ room’s all ready, Marse Duke,” he declared. “Dere’s candles enough, an’ de fire am laid an’ yo’ bed aired. Ef you wan’ some supper, I kin get you bread an’ meat, an’ de wine was put in yesterday.”