The brown veil of dusk lay upon the land, but in a hill-side thicket far away a light was shimmering to illumine the early evening festival of the gray fox--the moon was coming up. The air was still and soft, but heavy with the sappy scent from the damp grass land down the creek. On the comb of a cabin, grotesquely outlined in this dun-colored close of day, sat a negro blowing a melancholy reed, and high above him the bull-bats were screaming. In the shrubbery a hord of negro children were playing a counting-out game. I passed the cow-pens; the women were there and I heard the stream of milk spurting hard in the "piggin." My spirits rose out of their nervous lassitude; I felt a strong and almost unnatural sense of exhilaration, and this alarmed me, for we are sometimes afraid to feel an unaccountable buoyancy lest it may foretell a coming fall. I have known Christians who had prayed for sanctity in the sight of the Lord, to tremble at happiness, afraid that it might be a trap set by the devil. I skirted the shore of the creek, crossed the meadow, passed through the woods, entered the grassy lane and stood there with my arms on the fence, looking at the full moon, now high above the trees. And I thought that the foxes must have given over their dancing to scatter about for a night of mischievous prowling. I was on a knoll, and turning about I could see the lights in the cabins and the great house, a hen and her chickens squatted upon the ground, I fancied. The strongest light came from my Young Master's room, and in my mind I could see him sitting at the table with his eyes fastened upon his sheep-bound book. And the self-reproach of an ambitious thought that I was not keeping up with him started me homeward at a bound. But I had not gone far before I was stopped by a voice. A man stepped from the corner of the zig-zag fence. "Hold on!" he said, and the doctor stood before me. The moon was on his face and in the coarse lines that traced his countenance the devil's mockery was legible. "Where are you going?" he asked, standing with his hands behind him. "Home," I answered. "Home!" he repeated, and vitriol was in his voice. "Is there a home for everyone but me?" He threw his head back as if motioning toward the house. "Can you go back there and sleep on a bed when I am told never to cross that threshold again? Can you?" "I don't know what you mean, doctor?" "I have been driven away this night. The old man has turned me out." "But am I to blame? I am the humblest member of that household." He did not change his attitude, but I thought that I saw his bosom swelling. "The humblest because you are the lowest down, but a snake is low down," he said, thrusting his chin toward me. "Look here, spawn. The first step you took put you in my way. Do you hear me?"