It was this continued deluge that waked him up two hours later with the thought that the river would rise and with the fear that the herd of blooded cattle ranging in the swamp--the cattle belonging to Squire Kirby, his landlord--would drown. It brought him thumping suddenly out of bed and made him light the lamp. Twelve, declared the hands of a gingerbread clock on the mantel. “I better see about them cattle,” he said. Now, tending cattle wasn’t part of his contract with Squire Kirby. A bale of cotton a year rent for the little farm he lived on _was_. But the bale was seldom forthcoming. It was such a long way to the end of a cotton row, and what excitement was there waiting for you when you got there? You just had to turn round and hoe to the end of another row. “All right,” Kirby had said, over and over; “if you can’t pay, you can’t, Jeff. You just bring me an Injun or two to send to my grandchildren for Christmas an’ we’ll call it squar’.” So the Indian or two, or half a dozen of them, had come to be his rent. For the rest, he did look after the cattle whenever he happened to be in the swamp, and Kirby always had the pick of his string of fish and bag of game. Now, listening shrewdly to the ever-increasing rain, he dressed and picked up his lantern. Then he blew out the lamp and plunged into the storm. Bent double against wind and rain, lantern unlighted, because he loved to find his way in the dark, he hurried across the field. Just before he reached the main road he stopped. Along that road splashed three or four negroes, a lantern between them. “Dat you, Mr. Jeff Potter?” one of them called. But he did not answer. They were Kirby’s hands; they might want to go with him; they would be more trouble than they were worth; he would have to be pulling them, instead of cattle, out of the swamp before he got through. They hesitated a moment, then went on, mumbling to one another. Old Jeff grinned. “When they git home,” he chuckled, “they’ll be tellin’ folks they seen a ha’nt.” * * * * * An eighth of a mile before he came to Blainey’s store he turned off into a narrow wood road seldom used. He could see pretty well in the dark, old Jeff could, but he wasn’t looking for anything like this--he almost ran into the car that stood there in the road! He lit his lantern now and glanced all around. There was no one in the streaming woods. He went to the car, pulled aside the curtains that were fastened down, and peered in. The seats were empty. All excited, he went back to the rear and squatted down. The lantern light shone on the number and lettering of the license. It was a city car. He got out of his inside breastpocket a frazzled notebook, a sort of diary, in which he jotted down bits of wood lore and queer things he saw as he went about. From inside the leaves he took a stub pencil, and set down the number of that car, and the date on which he had seen it.