He was feeling more clearly and deeply than he had ever felt; the impressions made upon him were going to last until he was an old man, but because he kept seeing himself as if he were someone else, he thought he wasn’t much affected, and was disappointed in himself. He couldn’t help seeing the house as if it were a stage-set for a play about inferior people, and the people in the house as if they had been actors, and that seemed to him cruel and unworthy. He went on out of doors and sat on a stump near the house, where his father used to smoke his pipe in the evening. It came to him there that _he_ was the head of the family now. Somehow he had to take the place of the strong, resourceful man who was dead. He felt slight and ignorant--incompetent. The flash and fragrance of the spring day seemed inappropriate and unnatural. He held up his hand to shield his eyes. The fresh yellow-jasmine-scented air was strange in his nostrils. He stared off across the clearing. That, too, seemed like a scene in a play, and yet no other spot of ground was so familiar. The climbing sun lit as if they had been candles the red trumpet flowers that hung on a twisted pine. There had always been a trumpet vine on that tree.... Something moved near the base of the tree. He looked more closely and saw that it was a woman. She was waving her hand--beckoning. He got up and walked across the clearing. As he came nearer he recognized a spry, birdlike creature who played the melodeon in the Old Ship. He remembered that she used to give him tea cakes. “Why, howdy, sis? Charity?” He held out his hand. She took it and peered at him with nearsighted eyes from a kindly face as wrinkled as a nanny-oak ball. “Howdy, Woodie? Yer sho’ has growed lak’ er weed! De spittin’ image uv yer maw! Ah called yer over hyeh ter keep from disturbin’ her. Ah--Ah got somethin’ ter tell yer.” Her eyes blinked rapidly; she put her head first on one side and then on the other with quick little jerks and her fingers worked nervously together. “Dat low-down nigger, dat Zach Draper”--she looked around uneasily--“when he preach ter yer paw’s funeral ter-morrer, he gwine--gwine”--her voice shook--“_he gwine sen’ his soul ter hell!_” Woodie stared in blank amazement. “He’s go’n’er do _what_?” “_He gwine sen’ yer paw’s soul ter hell!_” “But--but how can he? What’s _he_ got to do with it? Don’t everybody know Pappy was a good man? Do you think anybody will believe him?” “_Ev’ybody_ b’lieve um! Ain’t he de preacher? An’ ain’t yer paw laid his ’ligion down? Fer fifteen years he ain’t gone ter church nowhar!” “There warn’t anywheres else to go but the Old Ship.” “That ain’t gwine make no diff’rence ter most folks. Dey’ll say Brudder Zach’s got de right ter decide ’bout dat. He’s er powerful man when it comes ter de ’splainments uv de Sperret!”