* * * * *

“She look’d so lovely, as she sway’d
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.”

As Mr. Ryder murmured these words audibly, with an appreciative thrill, he heard the latch of his gate click, and a light footfall sounding on the steps.  He turned his head, and saw a woman standing before his door.

She was a little woman, not five feet tall, and proportioned to her height.  Although she stood erect, and looked around her with very bright and restless eyes, she seemed quite old; for her face was crossed and recrossed with a hundred wrinkles, and around the edges of her bonnet could be seen protruding here and there a tuft of short gray wool.  She wore a blue calico gown of ancient cut, a little red shawl fastened around her shoulders with an old-fashioned brass brooch, and a large bonnet profusely ornamented with faded red and yellow artificial flowers.  And she was very black,—­so black that her toothless gums, revealed when she opened her mouth to speak, were not red, but blue.  She looked like a bit of the old plantation life, summoned up from the past by the wave of a magician’s wand, as the poet’s fancy had called into being the gracious shapes of which Mr. Ryder had just been reading.

He rose from his chair and came over to where she stood.

“Good-afternoon, madam,” he said.

“Good-evenin’, suh,” she answered, ducking suddenly with a quaint curtsy.  Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age.  “Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?” she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations for the evening were visible.

“Yes,” he replied, with an air of kindly patronage, unconsciously flattered by her manner, “I am Mr. Ryder.  Did you want to see me?”

“Yas, suh, ef I ain’t ‘sturbin’ of you too much.”

“Not at all.  Have a seat over here behind the vine, where it is cool.  What can I do for you?”

“’Scuse me, suh,” she continued, when she had sat down on the edge of a chair, “’scuse me, suh, I ‘s lookin’ for my husban’.  I heerd you wuz a big man an’ had libbed heah a long time, an’ I ‘lowed you would n’t min’ ef I ‘d come roun’ an’ ax you ef you ’d ever heerd of a merlatter man by de name er Sam Taylor ‘quirin’ roun’ in de chu’ches ermongs’ de people fer his wife ’Liza Jane?”

Mr. Ryder seemed to think for a moment.

“There used to be many such cases right after the war,” he said, “but it has been so long that I have forgotten them.  There are very few now.  But tell me your story, and it may refresh my memory.”

She sat back farther in her chair so as to be more comfortable, and folded her withered hands in her lap.