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Through her sobering maturer years she had passed from one set of hands to another, until finally, in her declining days, she found asylum in the affectionate ownership of Judge Priest, with Jeff to curry her fat sides and no more arduous labor to perform than occasionally to draw the Judge about from place to place in his ancient shovel-topped buggy. About her now there was naught to suggest the prancing rozin-back she once had been; the very look of her eye conjured up images of simple pastoral scenes–green meadows and purling brooks.

But let a certain signal be sounded and on top of that let a certain air be played and Mittie May, instantly losing that air she had of a venerable and dignified sheep, became a Mittie May transformed; a Mittie May reverted to another and more feverish time; a Mittie May stirred by olden memories to nightmarish performances. By chance once Jeff had happened upon her secret, and now, all in one illuminating flash, recalling the conditions governing this discovery, he gave vent to a low anticipatory chuckle. It was the first chuckle he had uttered in a fortnight, and this one was edged with a sinister portent. He had his idea now. He had at hand the agency for bringing the scheme to fruition. But yet there remained much of preliminary detail to be worked out. His plan still was like a fine-toothed comb which has seen hard usage in a wiry thatch–there were wide gaps between its prongs.

Jeff gave himself over to sustained thought. He made calculations calendar-wise. This was the first day of August; the eighth, therefore, was but seven short days removed. This plot of his seemed to resemble a number of things. It was like a piece of pottery, too. First the plastic clay must be assembled, then the vessel itself turned from it; finally the completed product must be given time to harden before it would be ready for use. He must move fast but warily.

To begin with, now, he must create a setting of plausibility for the role he meant, in certain quarters, to essay; must dress the character, as it were, in its correct housings and provide just the right touches of local color. Ready at hand was Aunt Dilsey; he would make her, unwittingly so far as she kenned, a supporting member of the cast. She would never know it, but she would play an accessory part, small but important, in his prologue.

Five minutes later she lifted her eyebrows in surprise. As he reinserted himself halfway across the portals of the realm where she queened it his recent moroseness was quite gone from him. About him now was the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that here stood one who, after profound cogitation, had found out what ailed him and, by the finding out, was filled with a gentle, chastened satisfaction. He seated himself on the kitchen door-step, facing outward so that comparative safety might be attained with a single flying leap did her uncertain temper, flaring up suddenly, lead her to acts of hostility before he succeeded in winning her over. He uttered a long-drawn sigh, then sat a minute in silence. In silence, too–a suspicious, menacing silence–she glared at him.

“Aunt Dilsey,” he ventured, speaking over his shoulder, with his face averted from her, “mebbe you been noticin’ yere lately I seemed kind of downcasted an’ shiftless, lak ez ef I had a mood on me?”

“Has I noticed it?” she repeated–“huh!” The punctuating grunt was non-committal. It might mean nothing; it might mean anything.

He cleared his throat and went on,

“An’, mebbe–I ain’t sayin’ you actually is; I’s sayin’ it with a mebbe–mebbe you been marvelin’ in yore mind whut it wuz w’ich pestered me an’ made me ack so kind of no-‘count?”

“I ain’t needin’ to marvel,” she stated coldly. “I knows. Laziness! Jes’ pyure summer-time nigger laziness, wid a rich streak of meanness th’owed in.”