"All right, we'll talk about it after you've had one of old Kizzie's fried chicken dinners. Here we are at the Mansion. Remember, you know the _whole_ situation and are only supposed to know the part that Governor Bill _thinks_ is the whole. Look at me, boy!" And as the big car drove up to the curb before a great stone house with tall pillars on guard of its front, he laid both his hands upon my shoulders and turned me towards him with force and no gentleness and then with his keen eyes did he look down into the very soul of me. "Yes, I see I can trust you, sir. God bless you, boy!" he said after a very long moment of time. "Yes, my Uncle Robert," I answered him without turning my eyes from his. "Well, then, here we are. I came to the side door so I wouldn't have to introduce you to any of the boys this morning, for we want to have a talk with the Governor before dinner and I don't dare keep Kizzie waiting. It riles her, and a riled woman burns up things: masters, husbands, cooking or worse. Come on." And as we walked up the broad side steps of that Mansion of the Gouverneur, my Uncle Robert's hand was on my arm and I felt that I was being marched up to the mouth of the gun of Fate and I wished very much I could have been habited in my corduroy or cheviot skirts, no matter how short or narrow they might be. A number of gentlemen sat upon the wide verandah smoking pipes or long cigars under the budding rose vine that trailed from one tall pillar to another, and more stood and talked in groups beside the large front door that opened into the wide hall. At the back of the hall before a closed door stood a very large black man who was very old and bent and who had tufts of white wool of the aspect of a sheep upon his head. He was attired in a long gray coat of a military cut that I afterwards learned was of the late Confederacy, and I soon had much affection for him because of his reminiscences of that war and also because of his affection for my noble father, to whom he had told the same stories' in his early youth. My Uncle, the General Robert, had not paused to present to me any of the gentlemen with whom he had exchanged jovial greetings, but he stopped beside the old black man and said: "This is Henry's boy, Robert, Cato. Fine young chap, eh?" "Yes, sir, Mas' Robert," answered Cato as he peered into my face with the nicest affection in his black eyes set in large spaces of white. "Like Henry, isn't he?" "'Fore God, yes, sir!" "Look after him, Cato. He'll be about considerable." "Dat I will--Mas' Henry's boy!" "No lobbying dimity chasing him, Cato!" "Yes, sir; I understands, sir." "Is the Governor ready for me?"