“Little Coffee! Why, to be sure, that’s a very queer name for any Christian soul to have,” said Jack. The negro boy’s grin disappeared into quick darkness. “My name no queer,” he said, with a sudden childish sullenness. “My name Little Coffee all right. My fader Big Coffee—I Little Coffee.” “Well,” said Jack, “I never heard of anybody named Coffee in all my life before.” “Where you come from?” asked the negro boy. “I came from England,” said Jack; “we drink coffee there; we don’t give Coffee as a name to Christian souls. Where do you come from, Coffee?” “Me come nowhere,” said Coffee, with a returning grin. “Me born here in yan house.” Beyond the row of negro huts was a small wooden cabin of a better appearance than the others. Suddenly a white man came out of the door of this hut, stood looking for a moment, and then walked forward toward Jack. It was Dennis, the overseer. He—unless Peggy Pitcher be excepted—became almost the most intimate friend Jack had for the two months or so that he lived at the Roost; and in this curiously strange fragment of his life, perhaps the most vivid recollections that remained with him in his after memory were of intervals of time spent in Dennis’s hut; of the great black, sooty fireplace; of the shelf-like floor at the further end of the cabin, where was the dim form of the bed with the bright coverlet; of Dennis’s negro wife, pattering about the earthen floor in her bare feet, her scant red petticoat glowing like a flame of fire in the shadowy interior; of Dennis himself, crouching over the smoldering ashes, smoking his Indian clay pipe of tobacco. As Dennis now approached, Jack thought that he had hardly ever seen a stranger-looking figure, for a pair of gold ear-rings twinkled in his ears, a broad hat of woven grass shaded his face, he wore a pair of loose white cotton drawers, and a red beard covered his cheeks and chin and throat. “I do suppose,” said Dennis, when he had come close enough to Jack—“I do suppose that you are the new boy that came last night.” “Yes,” said Jack, “I am.” CHAPTER XIV IN ENGLAND IT is not to be supposed that Jack could have disappeared so suddenly and entirely as he had done without leaving behind him much talk and wonder as to what had become of him. One day, for instance, Mr. Stetson stopped old Hezekiah in the street and began asking after Jack. “I know nought of him, Master Stetson,” said the old man. “He always was a main discontented, uneasy lad as ever I see. Time and time again have he talked to me about running away to sea—and that, whenever I would tell him ’twas time for him to be earning his own living by honest, decent work.” “But, Mr. Tipton,” said the rector, “I do hear talk that he hath been kidnapped.” “Mayhap he have been,” said Hezekiah; “but I know naught of him.”