Nathaniel screamed out at this, a fleck of froth showing on his lips.  “That is the horrible thing—­I know I am not one of the saved.  My heart is all full of carnal pleasures and desires.  To look at the sun on the hillside—­why I love it so that I forget my soul—­hell—­God—­”

His father gave a deep shocked groan and put his hand over the quivering lips.  “Be not a bitterness to him that begot you.  Hush!”

The fever of excitement left the boy and he fell down with his face in the pillow to lie there motionless until his parents went out for second meeting, leaving him alone in the house.  “Confidence must be rooted out of his tabernacle,” said his father sternly.  “The spirit of God is surely working in his heart in which I see many of my own besetting sins.”

Nathaniel sprang up, when he heard the door shut, with a distracted idea of escape, now that his jailers were away, and felt an icy stirring in the roots of his hair at the realization that his misery lay within, that the walls of his own flesh and blood shut it inexorably into his heart forever.  He threw open the window and leaned out.

The old negress came out of the woods at the other end of the street, her turban gleaming red.  She moved in a cautious silence past the meeting-house, but when she came opposite the minister’s house, thinking herself alone, she burst into a gay, rapid song, the words of which she so mutilated in her barbarous accent that only a final “Oh, Molly-oh!” could be distinguished.  She carried an herb-basket on her arm now, into which, from time to time, she looked with great satisfaction.

Nathaniel ran down the stairs and out of the door calling.  She paused, startled.  “How can you sing and laugh and walk so lightly?” he cried out.

She cocked her head on one side with her turtle-like motion.  “Why should she not sing?” she asked in her thick, sweet voice.  She had never learned the difference between the pronouns.  “She’s be’n gatherin’ yarbs in the wood, an’ th’ sun is warm,” she blinked at it rapidly, “an’ the winter it is pas’, Marse Natty, no mo’ winter!”

Nathaniel came close up to her, laying his thin fingers on her fat, black arm.  His voice quivered.  “But they say if you love those things and if they make you glad you are damned to everlasting brimstone fire.  Tell me how you dare to laugh, so that I will dare too.”

The old woman laughed, opening her mouth so widely that the red lining to her throat showed moistly, and all her fat shook on her bones.  “Lord love ye, chile, dat’s white folks’ talk.  Dat don’t scare a old black woman!” She shifted her basket to the other arm and prepared to go on.  “You’re bleeged to be keerful ‘bout losin’ yo’ soul.  Black folks ain’t got no souls, bless de Lord!  When dey dies dey dies!”

She shuffled along, laughing, and began to sing again.  Nathaniel looked after her with burning eyes.  After she had disappeared between the tree trunks of the forest, the breeze bore back to him a last joyous whoop of “Oh, Molly-oh!” He burst into sobs, and shivering, made his way back into his father’s darkening, empty house.