He lived in the little cabin at the foot of the garden, provided for out of our slender income and exempted from all labor; but he insisted on regarding himself as our servant, weeded the garden, or sat in the wide, bare hall, ready to meet chance visitors and usher them into the barer parlor with old-time ceremony. To me a halo of romance surrounded his venerable head. Such stories as he could tell me of the past! They were highly colored and delightfully exaggerated. My mother, absorbed in melancholy retrospection, left me much to my own devices, and many an evening I spent in Uncle Peter’s cabin, listening to his rambling talk, and questioning him about my ill-fated grandaunt. Nearly all that I had ever learned of her history had been gleaned from his conversations. He would sit at the corner of the hearth, bent forward in his chair, his wrinkled old hands folded on the knob of his walking stick, the firelight playing in uncertain, flickering gleams over his black face and kinky white locks. He was a fair type of the old-fashioned plantation negro, simple, superstitious, but shrewd and faithful to his trusts. Of Euphemia D’Esterre he always spoke with reverential pride, but keeping a certain guard over himself as though he possessed some knowledge he did not want to betray. "She wus mighty proud, oh yes, honey, dey all helt dey heads high; but she neber was hard on de black fo’ks. She al’ays had er smile, or kind word for um, tel bimeby she got in dat trubble, en had no smiles for ennybody. Ole marse had jes done gimme tu be Marse Albert’s boy, en I was little; but I seed en hear more’n ennybody things I does. I seed ’er comin’ down de stairs dat night in dat laylock gown, en smilin’ so strange lack a chill crope down my back. De tables was done spread fo’ de weddin’, de cakes backed, de silber shinin’, en de fo’ks all done come. Hit would ’a’ been de bigges’ weddin’ eber on Red River ef Miss Euphemy hadn’t tuk en vanished as she did. Lawd, Lawd, what did become o’ ’er?" He always came round to that hopeless question, shaking his head with a deep sigh. Then, after a reflective pause, he would cast a glance over his shoulder into the shadowy corners of the room, and, lower his voice to a solemn whisper, say: "Miss Phemy, honey, I feels lack she gwinter come back—lack she gwinter ’pear tu ole Peter ’fo’ ’e dies." I had listened to the utterance of that superstitious belief countless times, but repetition could not rob it of its impressiveness. I ceased to shiver and feel as though my blood was curdling, but I would cast an awed, half-fearful glance out into the night, almost expecting to see her come floating downward through its solemn gloom, clothed in white raiment, radiant as the stars. No wonder a thrill of apprehension chilled my young blood, when the lilac gown was suggested as a suitable costume for the first fancy-dress party I had ever known to be given in Magnoliaville.