The Colonel took a firmer grasp of the black hand. “No ill-will, Joe?” he questioned, anxiously. “No, suh, Marse Whit’, I hain’t got no hard feelin’s ’gin you.” “Well, then good-bye, Joe. If I ever get my head above water, I ’ll keep my promise about you and Liza. She looked on you as her favorite, but don’t raise your hopes too high. I’m an old man now, and it may be uphill work down there.” The negro lowered his head and the overseer drove on. As the wagon rumbled down the rocky slope a wisp of blue smoke from the Colonel’s cigar followed it like a banner unfurled to the breeze. For several minutes after the wagon had disappeared Big Joe stood where he had alighted, his eyes upon the ground. “What’s the matter?” asked Gill, stepping down to him. “Nothin’, Marse--” Big Joe seemed to bite into the word as it rose to his tongue, then he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously and looked down again. The Gills exchanged ominous glaces, and there was a pause. “Have you had anything to eat this morning?” Gill bethought himself to ask. The black man shook his head. “I ain’t teched a bite sence dey sol’ me; dey offered it to me, but I didn’t want it.” Once more the glances of the husband and wife traveled slowly back and forth, centering finally on the face of the negro. “I reckon it’s ‘cause yore sick at heart,” observed Gill, at first sympathetically, and then with growing firmness as he continued. “I know how you feel; most o’ yore sort has a way o’ thinkin’ yorese’ves a sight better ’n pore white folks, an’ right now the truth is you can’t bear the idee o’ belongin’ to me ’n my wife. Now, me ’n you an’ her ought to come to some sort of agreement that we kin all live under. You won’t find nuther one of us the overbearin’ sort. We was forced to take you to secure ourse’ves agin the loss of our little all, an’ we want to do what’s fair in every respect. I’m told you are a fust-rate shoemaker. Now, ef you want to, you kin set up a shop in yore room thar, an’ have the last cent you kin make. You ’ll git plenty o’ work, too, fer this neighborhood is badly in need of a shoemaker. Now, my wife will fry you some fresh eggs an’ bacon an’ make you a good cup o’ coffee.” But all that Peter Gill had managed to say with satisfaction to himself seemed to have gone into one of the negro’s ears and to have met with not the slightest obstruction on its way out at the other. To the hospitable invitation which closed Peter’s speech, the negro simply said: “I don’t feel like eatin’ a bite.” “Oh, you don’t,” said Gill, at the end of his resources; “maybe you’d feel different about it ef you was to smell the bacon a-fryin’.” “I don’t wan’t to eat,” reiterated the slave. “Well, you needn’t unless you want to,” went on Gill, still pacifically. “That thar room on the right is fer you; jest go in it whenever you feel like it an’ try to make yorese’f at home; you won’t find us hard to git along with.”