Aunt Jemima, tall, bent, raw-boned, rose and approached the little girl with a seriousness that might have seemed formidable. She looked up with her big gray eyes all shining in the firelight, but did not offer to retreat. She only clutched fast the arms of the little chair that had taken her delighted fancy, and since she evidently would not leave it for a moment, the old woman pulled the chair, child and all, in front of the fire, into the full genial radiance of the blazing hickory logs. Ike and his mother and the hounds looked on at this proceeding, and one of the dogs, following close after the chair when it was dragged over the floor, squeaked in a low-spirited key and wheezed and licked aunt Jemima’s hand, as it grasped the knob, seeking to call attention to himself. “Now ain’t ye a nice one, a-goin’ on four legs an’ switchin’ a tail a-hint ye, an’ yit ondertakin’ ter be ez jealous ez folks,” she admonished him, and he frisked a little, glad to be spoken to on any terms, and sat down between her and the little girl, who still clutched the arms of the tiny chair. “Waal now, it air a plumb shame fur her ter be bar’foot this weather,” said aunt Jemima, contemplating the little guest. The old woman was abashed when she glanced up and saw the child’s companion, who, with Hiram Guyther, had just returned from the task of stabling the ox and sheltering the wagon, for she had not intended that the stranger should overhear this reflection. “I know that,” he drawled in a desolate low-spirited cadence, his eyes blinking in the light of a tallow dip that Mrs. Guyther had set on the mantel-piece, and seeking with covert curiosity to distinguish the members of the group. He paused suddenly, for at the sound of his voice the blind man abruptly rose to his feet and stretched out his arms gropingly. “Who—who?” he stuttered, as if his speech were failing him—“who be this ez hev kem hyar ter-night?” He passed his hands angrily across his eyes—“Ain’t it Jerry Binwell?” Blind as he was, he was the first to recognize the newcomer with that sharpening of the remaining senses which seeks to compensate for the loss of one. But indeed Jerry Binwell had outwardly changed beyond recognition in the twenty years since they had last seen him, when he and Abner were mere boys in the Cove, and had run off together to join the Southern army. Binwell took a step toward the door as if he regretted his entrance and wished that he still might go.