I was a strange child, I know. Everybody told me so, and _I_ knew it well enough without being told. The wise old men at Rice Corner, and their still wiser old wives, looked at me askance, as 'neath the thorn-apple tree I built my playhouse and baked my little loaves of mud bread. But when, forgetful of others, I talked aloud to myriads of little folks, unseen 'tis true, but still real to me, they shook their gray heads ominously, and whispering to my mother said, "Mark our words, that girl will one day be crazy. In ten years more she will be an inmate of the madhouse!" And then I wondered what a madhouse was, and if the people there all acted as our school-teacher did when Bill and the big girl said he was mad! The ten years have passed, and I'm not in a madhouse yet, unless, indeed, it is one of my own getting up! One thing more about Rice Corner, and then, honor bright, I'll finish the preface and go on with the story. I must tell you about the old schoolhouse, and the road which led to it. This last wound around a long hill, and was skirted on either side with tall trees, flowering dogwood, blackberry bushes, and frost grapevines. Half-way down the hill, and under one of the tallest walnut trees, was a little hollow, where dwelt the goblin with which nurses, housemaids, hired men, and older sisters were wont to frighten refractory children into quietness. It was the grave of an old negro. Alas! that to his last resting-place the curse should follow him! Had it been a white person who rested there, not half so fearful would have been the spot; now, however, it was "the old nigger hole"--a place to run by if by accident you were caught out after dark--a place to be threatened with if you cried in the night and wanted the candle lighted--a landmark where to stop when going part way home with the little girl who had been to visit you, and who, on leaving you, ran no less swiftly than you yourself did, half-fearing that the dusky form in the holly would rise and try his skill at running. Verily, my heart has beat faster at the thoughts of that dead negro than it ever has since at the sight of a hundred live specimens, "'way down south on the old plantation."