Neb drew up to the table with a continuously shaking head. For months he had desired to speak his mind to his young master, but had never dared to take so great a liberty. Now the unusual circumstances they were placed in, the fact that he had been lost in the mountains in his service and half scared to death, imbued him with new boldness. "She kain't he'p what he does, suh, no," said he. "But listen, now, Marse Frank, to po' ol' Neb. De pizen vine hit don't b'ar peaches, an' nightshade berries--dey ain't hulsome, eben ef dey're pooty." "Neb, stop that!" Layson commanded sharply. The old negro half slipped from the chair in which he had been sitting wearily. Once he had started on the speech which he had made his mind up, months ago, that, some day, he would screw his courage up to, he would not be stopped. "Oh, honey," he exclaimed, holding out his tremulous old hands in a gesture of appeal, while the fire-light flickered on a face on which affection and real sincerity were plain, "I's watched ovuh you evuh sence yo' wuh a baby, an' when I see dat han'some face o' hers was drawin' of yo' on, it jus' nigh broke my ol' brack heaht, it did. It did, Marse Frank, fo' suah." The young man could not reprimand the aged negro. He knew that all he said came from the heart, a heart as utterly unselfish and devoted in its love as human heart could be. "Oh, pshaw, Neb!" he said soothingly. "Don't worry. Perhaps I did go just a bit too far with Barbara--young folks, you know!--but that's all over, now." Again he wondered most uncomfortably if this were really true, again his mind made its comparisons between the bluegrass girl and sweet Madge Brierly. "There's no danger that Woodlawn will have any other mistress than my dear Aunt 'Lethe for many a long year," he concluded rather lamely. The emotion of the ancient darky worried him. It was proof that evidence of a love affair with Barbara Holton had been plain to every eye, he thought. Neb now slid wholly from the chair and dropped upon his knees close by the youth he loved, grasping his hand and pressing it against his faithful heart. "Oh, praise de Lawd, Marse Frank; oh, praise de Lawd!" he cried. Old Neb slept with an easier heart, that night, than had throbbed in his old black bosom since the probability that Barbara Holton would be a member of the party which was to visit his young master in the mountains, had first begun to worry him. But long after he had found unconsciousness on the boughs-and-blanket bed which he had fashioned for himself under Frank's direction, Layson, himself, was wandering beneath the stars, thinking of the problem that beset him.