The Leopard's Spots

little boy sat in the kitchen watching Aunt Eve get supper.

he gets well. I can’t sleep for hours and hours. I lie awake and cry when I h

can’t keep ’wake ’tall. You get so

t if I’m asleep when he goes, and I’ll sit up f

lin’ boy, but you git t

sleeping, at first. He sat and gazed with aching heart at her still, white

a long, long time you have been away. How brown the sun has tanned your face, but it’s just as handso

glassy look, that seemed to tak

strange voice, and look and words overwhelmed him. He burst int

much. Please, don’t talk that way. Please look at me like you used t

her eyes

ment, held him off at arm’s leng

now you. You must run to b

e clock. It was time to give her the soothing drops the doctor left. She took it, obedient as a child, and went on and on with interminable dreams of the past, now and then uttering strange things for a boy’s ears.

noticed this before. He watched the hands for five minutes. It seemed each minute was an hour, and five minutes were as long as a day. What

camp of the garrison. One night a drunken gang came shouting and screaming up the alley close beside the house, firing

called Nelse. In a minute, Nelse was on the

s he mopped the perspiration from his

ucceeded in getting a consignment of corn for seed, and to meet the threat of starvation among

ollowers with you organizing them into some sort of union League meetings, dealing out arms and ammunition to them, and wha

an’t control the camp followers who are organis

egro on the sidewalk, dressed in an old suit of Federal uniform, evidently under the influence of w

to the Preacher, “Git outer de road, white man

t home wondering in a hazy sort of way through his excited passions what the end of it all would be. Gradually in his mind for days this towering figure of the freed Negro had been growing more and more ominous, until it