The women folk--old Chloe at their head--decided Uncle Nelse must be in some dangerous condition when he sent the command for Cynthia, whom he had divorced fifty years before. The rumors reached Dr. Delaven, who made a visit to Nelse in the cabin where he was installed temporarily, waiting for the boatmen who were delegated to row him home, he himself declining to assist in navigation or any other thing requiring physical exertion. He was convinced his days were numbered, his earthly labors over, and he showed abject terror when Margeret entered with a glass of bitters Mrs. Nesbitt had prepared with the idea that the old man had caught a chill in his endeavor to follow the dogs on the oppossum hunt. "I told you all how it would be when I heard of him going," she asserted, with all a prophet's satisfaction in a prophecy verified. "Pluto had to just about tote him home--following the dogs at his age, the idea!" But for all her disgust at his frivolity she sent the bitters, and Delaven could not comprehend his shrinking from the cup-bearer. "Come--come, now! You're not at all sick, my man; what in the wide world are you shamming for? Is it for the dram? Sure, you could have that without all this commotion." "I done had a vision, Mahs Doctor," he said, with impressive solemnity. "My time gwine come, I tell you." He said no more until Margeret left the room, when he pointed after her with nervous intensity. "It's that there woman I seen--the ghost o' that woman what ain't dead--the ghost o' her when she was young an' han'some--that's what I seen in the McVeigh carriage this night, plain as I see yo' face this minute. But no such _live_ woman wa' in that carriage, sah. Pluto, he couldn't see but two, an' _I_ saw three plain as I could see one. Sure as yo' bawn it's a death sign, Mahs Doctor; my time done come." "Tut, tut!--such palaver. That would be the queerest way, entirely, to read the sign. Now, I should say it was Margeret the warning was for; why should the likeness of her come to hint of your death?" Nelse did not reply at once. He was deep in thought--a nervous, fidgety season of thought--from which he finally emerged with a theory evidently not of comfort to himself. "I done been talken' too much," he whispered. "I talk on an' on today; I clar fo'got yo' a plum stranger to we all. I tell all sorts o' family things what maybe Mahs Duke not want tole. I talked 'bout that gal Retta most, so he done sent a ghost what look like Retta fo' a sign. Till day I die I gwine keep my mouth shut 'bout Mahs Duke's folks, I tell yo', an' I gwine straight home out o' way o' temptations." So oppressed was he with the idea of Mahs Duke's displeasure that he determined to do penance if need be, and commenced by refusing a coin Delaven offered him.