Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/27

IN WHICH I SEE AND HEAR I made my way slowly back, all immediate hope of obtaining food dismissed from my mind. Greatly as I felt the need, the risk was too desperate. I had far better seek some safe corner within the old shed, sleep there quietly throughout the day if possible, and then try my luck he next night. Finding the door ajar, I crept in, discovering the interior well crowded with various implements of farm machinery and other odds and ends, among the intricacies of which I slowly picked a path back into the farthest corner. Here a variety of empty barrels and boxes offered a fairly secure hiding-place, and I crawled into a niche next the wall, and thankfully snuggled down, watching the advancing daylight slowly turn the rough interior gray. Almost before I realized the possibility I was sound asleep.

Some unusual noise aroused me, yet when I first opened my eyes I possessed no conception as to how long I had been sleeping. It was still bright daylight, however, and I could perceive a bit of sunlight streaming in through a crack of the western side wall. For a moment or two I lay there puzzled, hearing nothing, and unable immediately to determine what it was which had awakened me so suddenly. Then I distinguished voices conversing apparently not more than ten feet distant. Quietly as both parties spoke, their voices so subdued, indeed, as to render the words indistinguishable even at that distance and in the silence, I was enabled to determine the speakers to be a young white woman and a negro. There was no mistaking the intonation of the latter, but the other voice was so low, vibrant with the soft idiom of the South, that [ 19 ]