It was a modern eight room consolidated country school, which seemed to be built miles from everywhere. On one side, an old Ford car, three buggies, and at least fifteen saddle-horses were parked. A few shabby shrubs shivered silently in the sallow sunshine of spring. Here and there remnants of building material told the story of the building's recent construction. Walking along, I turned the corner of the building and looked toward the west. What I saw made me walk away from the schoolhouse to a white-haired darkey sitting on the ground propped against a wire fence. He seemed asleep, but when I came near him, he turned to me a weasened face with two eyes circled with the arcus senilis of the aged. I asked him to have a cigarette, and lit it for him; then sat down by his side. "Queer place for a schoolhouse, Uncle," I said. "Worsen queer. Poor and hard on us." "How come?" "Quality folks put it heayr, whar land was cheap. Peers like they didn't know about Massa." "Your Master?" "None but." I looked over at the tombstone. Just one stone, and at the back of it a cypress tree. Four fence posts around the tree and the stone, and then were connected by a wire fence. The posts were newly placed, the wire made up of odds and ends tied together and nailed in place with every kind of nail imaginable. I handed the old man another cigarette and a silver dollar. "Tell me about it," I asked. It was a short story. The Colonel had gone to war in '61 and his servant had gone with him. In '62 the negro had brought his Master back blind. Years later he had died, and was buried on the knoll, and a cypress was planted at the head of the grave. Now he was forgotten by all except the whitened slave. The land had been sold and a school house built on it. Today was the first day of school. The old man, afraid that the grave would be desecrated by the cheap white trash, had dug four holes, put in four posts, wired them and was now sitting guard till school was out and the children gone. "The Colonel shure wouldn't like it. Gwine to bother him riding." "Does he ride?" I asked. "Bound to. That air man was almost borned in saddle. He rid to the war and he rid back, blind tho he war, and he rides ever since. He done told me, 'Sam, I am bound to ride till Miss Belle Flowers marries me.' Corse, he done gone to Heaven years ago, but every night he rides on his white mare, and I done kiver me head with the blanket when Ise hear her hoofs go pounding up and down the road." "He was going to marry Miss Belle Flowers?" I asked. It appeared so. They were engaged when he rode away and when he came back blind, she was married to another. Every night he had the white mare saddled and would gallop up and down the road in front of her house. He and the mare died the same day, and according to his will, the Colonel and the Colonel's horse were buried in the same grave.