“Well, I'd go,” Amanda advised her nephew. “Mopin' around home like this won't do any good. At sech a time a body ought to keep the hands an' feet an' even the brain busy. I'd go stark crazy if I'd allow myself to set an' brood. It seems to me that I see yore pore pa's white face everywhar I turn, an' when I ain't seein' that I seem to hear his voice talkin' like nothin' out o' the way had happened. I even git a whiff o' his tobacco now an' then. Do you know, I think maybe death is made horrible like this to warn each of us of what is ahead. Me'n you, as little as we count on it, have got to be put away exactly like Rafe was, an' we may not have any more notice than he had, neither. Some o' the sanctified folks doubt whar he's gone, but I don't--much. Somehow I can't believe that he's gone to a bad place, because he had sech a hard time of it here for sech a long, long time. His pride was cut to the quick, an' he had a lot more o' that than most folks knowed about. Of course, you can't remember his young sparkin' days like I do. He used to dress as fine as a fiddle an' held his head powerful high; but time, an' poverty, an' trouble, an' one thing or other, kept pullin' it down an' down, till it struck the pillow he died on. Well, well, he's gone, an' we 'll miss 'im. I shall, I know, for I already do, an' they say the worst time ain't always right after the buryin'. Thar's always a stir and excitement over puttin' a person away that keeps you from lookin' the thing square in the face.” Fires of anger and resentment were smoldering in the boy's breast, but he said nothing, and turned down the road to Hoag's. He found the planter moving about in the bark-strewn tan-yard between the vats, the black contents of which were on a level with the ground. He was giving blunt orders to three or four negroes who were piling up and sorting out a great heap of green hides. The day was dry and hot, and a disagreeable odor of decaying flesh was on the still air. He noticed Paul, and carelessly nodded, but for a moment was too busy to speak to him. He held a note-book in his hand, in which he had found some mistakes of record and calculations. They were his own errors, but he was no less angry for that. Finally he approached Paul, and as he moved was actively scratching, erasing, stabbing the paper with his pencil, and muttering oaths. “How the hell can I do head-work,” he growled, giving the boy a blazing glance, “an' have to watch these black devils like a hawk all the time? The minute my back is turned they set down an' sulk an' shirk. They need a thousand lashes on their bare backs. That's the only thing they understand. Look how that whelp, Sambo, is skulkin'. I hit 'im with a piece o' plank just now, an' he thinks he's threatening me. Huh! I know 'em from the ground up. Did Cato tell you I wanted to see you?” “Yes, an' I come right over,” Paul stolidly replied.