"It is a happy thought," he almost cheerily responded, rising and taking up his hat; "let us go out at once. I am tired of being indoors, despite the good nursing I have had." They passed into the broad hall, where she took from a table her hat, on which the twisted sprig of mistletoe still remained, just as he had fixed it on the day of the shoot, and thence they went forth among the magnolia trees on the front lawn. "One can never quite lose sight of the river here," said Reynolds; "see how it shines under the boughs yonder. Isn't it fine?" "Have you noticed that the gentle roar it had some weeks ago is almost silenced?" she asked. "I had not, but I do now," he answered; "what is the cause?" "It has fallen so low that its current is too sluggish, I suppose; but Uncle Mono and the rest of the negroes have a pretty saying that the river sings till the mocking birds begin, and then it becomes silent in order to listen to their voices." "That is a poetical idea." "They have a more grotesque one about the moon crossing the river." "What is that?" "They claim that if one takes a skiff and goes to the middle of the river, exactly at midnight when the moon is full, one may see the moon in the water making all sorts of wry faces at the moon in the sky." "I have observed that myself," said Reynolds, very gravely. "The moon making faces?" she exclaimed with a little smile, looking inquiringly up into his face. "Yes, the skiff or the wind breaks the surface of the water into ripples which cause the reflection of the moon to appear to do all manner of fantastic things." "Oh, I understand it now. I had never thought of that." "But," she added, after a moment of silence, "it would be cruel to explain away Uncle Mono's fanciful legend or myth of the Alabama and the moon. Don't you think so?" "The old scamp is not so ignorant," said Reynolds. "It would not be so easy as you might imagine to destroy his stories. He would have plenty of expedients for evading the demonstrations of natural philosophy." "I should hope he would," she said, "for there is something fascinating in all his grotesqueries. They seem to have a smack of genuine African wildness of poetry in them." They sat down on a low wooden bench, mossy with age and exposure to the weather, under a grand magnolia tree. Here they were in the full tide of the breeze with all the freshness and fragrance of the morning around them. The dingy old house, so large and plain and yet so picturesquely Southern, was just sufficiently removed to be nearly lost in its vines and trees. Reynolds felt some sort of dread lest their conversation should fall away from the lightness with which it had begun--a dread almost betrayed when he said: "Can't you think of another negro conceit? I am sorry I spoiled the one about the moon."