When Jack entered the kitchen he found the man who had brought him and Mr. Parker down the river in the boat, sitting at the table eating, while a barefoot negro woman, with necklace and bracelets of blue glass beads, waited upon him. The man looked up and welcomed Jack as he came in, and then almost immediately began asking him questions about England. The feeling of loneliness and depression was settling more and more heavily upon Jack’s spirits, and he replied vaguely hardly knowing what were the questions asked him, or what he said in answer. After he had ended his supper, he went and stood in the doorway, looking out into the starlit night. He thought he saw the dim forms of human figures moving about in the gloom, and the black outlines of rude buildings. The warm darkness was full of the ceaseless whispering noises of night, broken now and then by the sudden sound of loud gabbling negro voices. The mockingbirds were singing with intermittent melody from the dark stillness of the distant woods. His feeling of depression seemed to weigh upon Jack’s soul like a leaden weight. He could almost have cried in his loneliness and homesickness. * * * * * When Jack woke at the dawning of the next day, in the little bare room at the end of the upper hall where he slept within easy call of Mr. Parker’s voice, he did not at first know where he was. Then instantly came recollection, and with it a keen longing to see his new surroundings. He arose, dressed hastily, and went down-stairs and out of doors. Everything looked very different in the wide clear light of early morning. The buildings he had seen in the blackness of the night before resolved into a clustered jumble of negro huts,—some of frame, some of wattled sticks,—about which moved the wild figures of the half-savage black men, women, and children. Jack walked out into the open yard, and turned and looked back at the house. It was a great rambling frame structure, weather-beaten and gray. Several of the windows were open, and out of one of them hung a patchwork bed-coverlet, moving lazily now and then in the wind. A thin wreath of smoke curled away from one of the chimneys into the blue air. Everything looked very fresh and keen in the bright light of the morning. A lot of negro children had been playing about the huts, some of them entirely naked. They ceased their play and stood staring at Jack as he came out into the open yard, and a negro lad of about his own age, who was standing in the door of a wattled hut at a little distance, came over and spoke to him. The black boy was lean and lanky, with over-grown, spider-like legs and arms. He had a little round, nut-like head covered with a close felt of wool. “Hi, boy!” he said, when he had come up close to Jack, “what your name?” “My name’s Jack Ballister,” said Jack; “what’s your name?” “My name Little Coffee,” and the negro boy grinned with a flash of his white teeth.