The lantern rattled on the floor, as the old negro fell upon his knees by the pallet. "Et's him!" he cried. "Dee Lawd he'p! Et's Marse Harry hese'f!" He leaned and looked, with a painful bewilderment, at the striped garments, the smooth, clipped scalp. "Huccome he got dem close on?" he said to himself, half-fearfully. He stood a moment looking from them to the pallet, then hastily rolled the sodden things into a bundle and thrust it out of sight behind one of the sacks on the floor. Late the next afternoon the smoke from the stone chimney of the big bungalow rose in a pale spiral into the keen windless air. Inside a leaping fire of chestnut wood burned on the huge hearth and Harry lay on a comfortable, blanket-covered couch in the corner. All day long Jubilee Jim had watched beside him, as he tossed in delirium, now and then touching the hot hand, laying cooling cloths on the fevered wound, or feeding him with a spoon. He had not dared go down the mountain to fetch a doctor, fearing to leave his patient so long alone. All day, as he watched, his slow brain had been busy with the strangeness of that arrival--most of all with the mystery of the striped clothes. To his simple intelligence, unvexed by the complexities of life in communities, evil and good stood out in sharp and irreconcilable contradistinction, and the garments were a harrowing symbol. But deep in him was that profound, unreasoning belief--the South's touching legacy of ante-bellum days--that trust and confidence that is dog-like and unswerving. Towards evening, when the sick man became easier and he lay more quietly, though his fever ran high, Jubilee Jim opened the door, and stood looking out onto the lone, frosty hillside. The sun was going down amid a flutter of scarlet scarfs and the marbled pines stood in sombre clusters outlined like sentinels above the pansied twilight of the snowy valley. At length he knelt down and with gnarled hands clasped and eyes still on the colourful sky, he said: "O Lawd, Ah don' know what mek Marse Harry come hyuh lak dis. But yo' knows what he done fo' ole Jube. Keep him yeahs en yeahs, feed him, en when he so sick he gwine die, tek en git er doctah en cure him up. When ah so old ah ain' no good no mo' he gimme dee lan' up hyuh fo' tuh live on. Don' do nuffin cep'n watch dee house, en when he come sometimes Ah cooks fo' him--das all! Ah don' know whaffuh he have on dem wicked clo's--don' keer nuth'n erbout dat. Kase, Lawd, Marse Harry ain' ben fo' tuh do nuth'n _bad_. Dey tek yo' darlin' son, dee Book says, en put er crown o' tho'ns on he beautiful haid, en he ain' done nuth'n 'tall cep'n good. Ah don' keer what Marse Harry have on; Ah reck'n when he come lak dis, Yo' gwine he'p me he'p him--kase das what he done fo' me!" As the earnest voice ceased, another spoke behind him. "Jube!" The old man rose hastily and came to the couch. "Yo' knows me ergen, Marse Harry?" "Yes, Jube. When--did I get here?"