The judge pointed with his crop. “That narrow wagon-track,” he said, “goes to Hell’s-Half-Acre.” “Oh, yes,” said Betty. “That’s that weird settlement on the Dome where Shirley’s little prot g e Rickey Snyder came from.” It was all she said, but her glance at the girl beside her was one of open admiration. For, as all in the party knew, the lonely road had been connected with an act of sheer impulsive daring in Shirley’s girlhood that she would never hear spoken of. Judge Chalmers flicked his horse’s ears gently with his rein and they moved slowly on, presently coming in sight of a humble patch of ground, enclosed in a worm-fence and holding a whitewashed cabin with a well shaded by varicolored hollyhocks. Under the eaves clambered a gourd-vine, beneath which dangled strings of onions and bright red peppers. “Do let us get a drink!” said Chilly Lusk. “I’m as thirsty as a cotton-batting camel.” “All right, we’ll stop,” agreed the judge, “and you’ll have a chance to see another local lion, Betty. This is where Mad Anthony lives. You must [Pg 65]have heard of him when you were here before. He’s almost as celebrated as the Reverend John Jasper of Richmond.” Betty tapped her temple. “Where have Ah heard of John Jasper?” “He was the author of the famous sermon on The Sun do Move. He used to prove it by a bucket of water that he set beside his pulpit Saturday night. As it hadn’t spilled in the morning he knew it was the earth that stood still.” Betty nodded laughingly. “Ah remember now. He’s the one who said there were only four great races: the Huguenots, the Hottentots, the Abyssinians and the Virginians. Is Mad Anthony really mad?” “Only harmlessly,” said Shirley. “He’s stone blind. The negroes all believe he conjures—that’s voodoo, you know. They put a lot of stock in his ‘prophecisms.’ He tells fortunes, too. S-sh!” she warned. “He’s sitting on the door-step. He’s heard us.” The old negro had the torso of a black patriarch. He sat bolt upright with long straight arms resting on his knees, and his face had that peculiar expressionless immobility seen in Egyptian carvings. He had slightly turned his head in their direction, his brow, under its shock of perfectly white crinkly hair, twitching with a peculiar expression of inquiry. His age might have been anything [Pg 66]judging from his face which was so seamed and creviced with innumerable tiny wrinkles that it most resembled the tortured glaze of some ancient bitumen pottery unearthed from a tomb of K r. Under their heavy lids his sightless eyeballs, whitely opaque and lusterless, turned mutely toward the sound of the horse hoofs. The judge dismounted, and tossing his bridle over a fence-picket, took from his pocket a collapsible drinking cup. “Howdy do, Anthony,” he said. “We just stopped for a drink of your good water.”