Meanwhile Bud Goble was making the best of his way homeward, guided by the blaze from a light-wood fire on the hearth which shone through the open door. It was not such a home as the most of us would care to go to at night, for it was the most cheerless place in the country for miles around. Even the humblest cabin in Mr. Riley's negro quarter, half a mile away, was a more inviting spot. And as for the family who occupied it--well, a benighted traveler, no matter how tired and hungry he might be, would have gone farther and camped in the woods rather than ask supper and lodging of them. "Now, Susie," exclaimed Mr. Goble cheerfully, addressing a slouchy, unkempt woman who sat in front of the fire with her elbows resting on her knees and a dingy cob pipe between her teeth, "punch up the blaze an' dish up a supper while I read my letter an' see what's into it." "Who's been a-writin' a letter to you?" queried the woman, without changing her position. "That's what I don't know till I read it. It's something about them babolitionists that our gover'ment has ordered to get outen here, I reckon. But I'm powerful hungry. I aint had a bite to eat sense I left in the mornin'." "Well, then, where's the meal an' bacon I told you to fetch along when you come home?" inquired Mrs. Goble. "I told you plain as I could speak it that there wasn't a drop of anything to eat in the house; an' here's the young ones been a-howlin' for grub the whole day long." "Land sakes, if I didn't forget all about it," said Goble regretfully. "But how on earth am I goin' to get grub when I aint got no money to pay for it? Our committee didn't give me no money to-day kase I didn't have nothing to tell 'em. 'Pears like all the traitors keep mighty glum when I'm around. See two or three of 'em talkin' together, an' they shet up the minute I begin to sidle up to 'em." "You aint wuth shucks to work for that committee," replied his wife impatiently. "If I was a man an' had the job, I'd tell 'em something every hour in the day." "How could you when there wasn't nothing to tell, I'd like to know?" "I'd find plenty, I bet you. You haven't disremembered how them babolitionists an' the free niggers used to talk, about the time John Brown was makin' that raid of his'n, have you?" "'Course I aint; but them's old stories now. They've kept mighty still tongues in their heads sense that time." "No odds if they have. They was Union then, an' they're that same way of thinkin' now; an' the talk that would have hung 'em then, if our folks hadn't been jest the peaceablest people in the world, would get 'em into trouble now if it was brung up agin 'em." "An' would you tell them stories all over agin if you was me?" exclaimed Bud Goble. "I wouldn't do nothing else." "Jest as if they happened yisterday?" "Toby sure. You want money, don't you? an' that there committee of yourn won't give you none 'ceptin' you can tell 'em sunthin', will they?"