The Gills left their human property seated on a big rock in front of the cabin and withdrew to the rear. There they sat till near noon. Now and then Gill would peer around the corner to satisfy himself that his slave was still seated on the rock. Gill chewed nearly a week’s allowance of tobacco that morning; it seemed to have a sedative effect on his nerves. Finally, Ann Duncan loomed up in the distance and strode toward the cabin. She wore a gown of less brilliant tints than the one she had worn the day before. It had the dun color of clay washed into rather than out of its texture, and it hung from her narrow hips as if it were damp. “Well, he _did_ come,” she remarked, introductively. Mrs. Gill nodded. “Yes; the Colonel fetched ’im over this mornin’.” “So I heerd, an’ I jest ‘lowed I’d step over an’ see how you made out.” Mrs. Duncan’s rippling laugh recalled the whole of her allusions of the day previous. “Thar’s more talk goin’ round than you could shake a stick at, an’ considerable spite an’ envy. Some ‘lows that the havin’ o’ this slave is agoin’ to make you stuck up, an’ that you ’ll move yore membership to Big Bethel meetin’-house; but law me! I can see that you are bothered. How did he take to his room?” “He ain’t so much as looked in yit,” replied Mrs. Gill, with a frown. Thereupon Ann Duncan ventured up into the passage and peered cautiously round the corner at Big Joe. “He’sa-wipin’ of his eyes,” she announced, as she came back. “It looks like he’s a-cryin’ about some ‘n’.” At this juncture, a motley cluster of men, women, and children, led by Andrew Duncan, came out of the woods which fringed the red, freshly plowed field below, and began to steer itself, like a school of fish, toward the cabin. About fifty yards away they halted, as animals do when they scent danger. Heads up and open-mouthed, they stood gazing, first at the Gills, and then at their slave. Peter Gill grew angry. He stood up and strode as far in their direction as the ash-hopper under the apple-tree, and raised both his hands, as if he were frightening away a flock of crows. “Be off, the last one of you!” he shouted; “and don’t you dare show yorese’ves round heer unless you’ve got business. This ain’t no side-show--I want you to understand that!” They might have defied their old neighbor Gill, but the owner of a slave so big and well dressed as the human monument on the rock was too important a personage to displease with impunity; so, followed by the apologetic Mrs. Duncan, who blamed herself for having set a bad example to her curious neighbors, they slowly dispersed. At noon Mrs. Gill went into the cabin and began to prepare dinner. She came back to her husband in a moment, and in a low voice, and one that held much significance, she said: