Gideon

The house, which had hung on every word, roared with laughter and shook with a storming volley of applause.

Gideon bowed low, grinning, with assured comedic obeisances to right and left. But as the laughter and applause grew, he shook his head and signaled quietly for the curtain to drop. He had answered many encores, and he was an instinctive artist. It was part of the fuel of his vanity that his audience had never yet had enough of him. Dramatic judgment and a natural sense of delivery were innate in him, qualities that the shrewd Felix Stuhk, his manager and exultant discoverer, recognized and wisely trusted. Offstage, Gideon was watched over like a child and a delicate investment, but once behind the footlights, he was allowed to go his own triumphant way.

It was small wonder that Stuhk deemed himself one of the cleverest managers in the business, his narrow, blue-shaven face perpetually chiseled into smiles of complacent self-congratulation. He was rapidly becoming rich, and there were bright prospects of even greater triumphs, with proportionately greater rewards. In just six short months, he had made Gideon a national character, a headliner, a star of the first magnitude in the vaudeville firmament. Or, at any rate, he had helped make him all this; he had booked him well and given him his opportunity. To be sure, Gideon had done the rest; Stuhk was as ready as anyone to credit Gideon's ability. Still, after all, he, Stuhk, was the discoverer, the theatrical Columbus who had the courage and vision.

A now-hallowed attack of tonsillitis had driven him to Florida, where Gideon had been employed to beguile his convalescence and guide him over the intricate shallows of the long lagoon known as the Indian River in search of various fish. On days when fish were reluctant, Gideon had been lured into conversation, and gradually into narrative and the relation of what seemed humorous and entertaining to him. Finally, Felix, the vague idea growing big within him, had one day persuaded his boatman to dance on the boards of a long pier where they had stopped for lunch. There, in a sudden crystallization of glory, the vague idea took definite form and became the great inspiration of Stuhk's career.

Gideon had grown to be to vaudeville much what Uncle Remus is to literature: there was virtue in his very simplicity. His artistry was native and natural. He loved a good story, and he told it with his own sense of the gleeful morsel on his tongue, as no training could have made him. He always enjoyed his story and himself in the telling. Tales never lost their savor, no matter how often repeated; time couldn't dim the humor of the thing. As he had shouted, gurgled, and laughed over the fun of things when alone, or holding forth among the men, women, and children of his color, so he shouted, gurgled, and broke from sonorous chuckles to musical falsetto mirth when he fronted the sweeping tiers of faces across the intoxicating glare of the footlights. He had that rare power of transmitting his own enjoyment.

When Gideon was on stage, Stuhk liked to peek out at the intent, smiling faces of the audience, where men, women, and children, hardened theatergoers, and folk fresh from the country sat with moving lips and faces lit with eager interest and sympathy for the black man strutting in loose-footed vivacity before them.

"He's simply unique," Stuhk boasted to wondering local managers. "Unique, and it took me to find him. There he was, a little black goldmine, and all of 'em passed him by until I came. Some eye? What? I guess you'll admit you have to hand it to your Uncle Felix. If that coon's health holds out, we'll have all the money there is in the mint."

That was Felix's real anxiety—"If his health holds out." Gideon's health was watched over as if he were an ailing prince. His bubbling vivacity was the foundation of his charm and success. Stuhk became a sort of vicarious neurotic, forever searching for symptoms in his protégé; Gideon's tongue, Gideon's liver, Gideon's heart were matters of unfailing anxious interest. And of late—of course it might be imagination—Gideon had shown a little physical falling off. He ate a bit less, he had started to move restlessly, and, worst of all, he laughed less often.

As a matter of fact, there was reason for Stuhk's apprehension. It wasn't just managerial imagination: Gideon was less himself. Physically, there was nothing wrong with him; he could have passed his rigid insurance scrutiny as easily as he had months before, when his life and health were insured for a sum that made good copy for his press agent. He was sound in every organ, but something lacked in general tone. Gideon felt it himself and was certain that a "misery," that encompassing indisposition of his race, was creeping upon him. He had been fed well, too well; he was growing rich, too rich; he had all the praise and flattery his enormous appetite for approval desired, and too much of it.

White men sought him out and made much of him; white women talked to him about his career; and wherever he went, women of color—black, brown, and yellow girls—wrote him of their admiration, whispering, when he would listen, of their passion and hero-worship. "City niggers" bowed down before him; the high gallery was always packed with them. Musk-scented notes scrawled on barbaric, "high-toned" stationery poured in. Even a few white women, to his horror and embarrassment, had written him love letters, which he immediately destroyed. His sense of his position was strong in him; he was proud of it. There might be "folks outer their haids," but he had the sense to remember. For months he had lived in a heaven of gratified vanity, but at last his appetite had begun to falter. He was sated; his soul longed to wipe a spiritual mouth on the back of a spiritual hand and have done.

His face, now that the curtain was down and he was leaving the stage, was doleful, almost sullen.

Stuhk met him anxiously in the wings and walked with him to his dressing room. Gideon suddenly felt weary of Stuhk.

"Nothing the matter, Gideon, is there? Not feeling sick or anything?"

"No, Misteh Stuhk; no, seh. Jes don't feel extry pert, that's all."

"But what is it—anything bothering you?"

Gideon sat gloomily before his mirror.

"Misteh Stuhk," he said at last, "I been steddyin' it oveh, and I about come to the delusion that I needs a good po'k-chop. Seems foolish, I know, but it do' seem as if a good po'k-chop, fried jes right, would he'p consid'able to disumpate this misery feelin' that's crawlin' and creepin' round my sperit."

Stuhk laughed. "Pork-chop, eh? Is that the best you can think of? I know what you mean, though. I've thought for some time that you were getting a little overtrained. What you need is—let me see—yes, a nice bottle of wine. That's the ticket; it will ease things up and won't do you any harm. I'll go with you. Ever had any champagne, Gideon?"

Gideon struggled for politeness. "Yes, seh, I's had champagne, and it's a nice kind of lickeh sho enough; but, Misteh Stuhk, seh, I don' want any of them high-tone drinks to-night, an' ef yo' don' mind, I'd rather amble off 'lone, or mebbe eat that po'k-chop with some otheh cullud man, ef I kin fin' one that ain' one of them no-'count Carolina niggers. Do you s'pose yo' could let me have a little money to-night, Misteh Stuhk?"

Stuhk thought rapidly. Gideon had certainly worked hard, and he wasn't dissipated. If he wanted to roam the town alone, there was no harm in it. The sullenness still showed in the black face; heaven knew what he might do if he suddenly balked. Stuhk thought it wise to consent gracefully.

"Good!" he said. "Fly to it. How much do you want? A hundred?"

"How much is coming to me?"

"About a thousand, Gideon."

"Well, I'd moughty like five hun'red of it, ef that's 'greeable to yo'."

Felix whistled. "Five hundred? Pork-chops must be coming high. You don't want to carry all that money around, do you?"

Gideon didn't answer; he looked very gloomy. Stuhk hastened to cheer him. "Of course you can have anything you want. Wait a minute, and I will get it for you."

"I'll bet that coon's going to buy himself a ring or something," he reflected as he went to find the local manager and Gideon's money.

But Stuhk was wrong. Gideon had no intention of buying a ring. For that matter, he already had several that were perfectly satisfactory. They had size, sparkle, and luster, all the diamond brilliance a ring needs, and for none of them had he paid much over five dollars. He was amply supplied with jewelry he found satisfactory. His present want was positive, if nebulous; he desired a fortune in his pocket, bulky, tangible evidence of his miraculous success. Ever since Stuhk had found him, life had had an unreal quality for him. His Monte Cristo wealth was too much like a fabulous, dream-found treasure, money that couldn't be spent without danger of waking. He had fallen into the habit of storing it about him, so that in any pocket he plunged his hand into, he might find a roll of crisp evidence of reality.

He liked his bills in all denominations, some so large as exquisitely to stagger imagination, others charming by number and crispness—the dignified orange paper of a man of assured position, and crackling greenbacks whose design tinged the whole with actuality. He was especially partial to engravings of President Lincoln, the particular savior and patron of his race. This five hundred dollars he added to an unreckoned sum of about two thousand, as extra fortification against a growing gloom. He wanted to brace his flagging spirits with the gay wine of possession, and he was glad, when the money came, that it was in an elastic-bound roll so bulky it was pleasantly uncomfortable in his pocket as he left his manager.

As he turned into the brilliantly lit street from the somber alley of the stage entrance, he paused to glance at his own name, in three-foot red letters, before the theater doors. He could read, and the large block type always pleased him. "THIS WEEK: GIDEON." That was all. None of the fulsome praise or superlative definitions given to lesser performers. He remembered being billed as "GIDEON, America's Foremost Native Comedian," a title that was both boast and challenge. That necessity was now past, for he was a national character; any explanatory qualification would have insulted public intelligence. To the world, he was just "Gideon"; that was enough. It gave him pleasure, as he sauntered along, to see the announcement repeated on window cards and hoardings.

Presently he came to a window before which he paused in delighted wonder. It wasn't a large window; to the casual eye of a passerby, there was little to draw attention.

By day it lit the small floor space of a little stationer, who supplemented a slim business with a subagency for railroad and steamship lines. But tonight this window seemed the framework of a marvel of coincidence. On the broad, dusty sill inside were propped two cards: the one on the left was his own red-lettered announcement for the week; the one on the right—oh, world of wonders!—was a photogravure of that exact stretch of Florida's inner coast that Gideon knew best, that was home.

There it was, the Indian River rippling idly in full sunlight, palmettos leaning over the water, palmettos standing as irregular sentinels along the low, reef-like island that stretched away out of the picture. There was the gigantic, lonely pine he knew well, and, yes—he could just make it out—there was his own ramshackle little pier, which stretched in an undulating fashion, like a long-legged wading caterpillar, from the abrupt shoreline of eroded coquina into deep water.

He first thought this picture of his home was some new and delicate device by his press agent. His name on one side of the window, his birthplace on the other—what could be more tastefully appropriate? So he was sharply disappointed when he spelled out the reading matter beneath the photogravure. It read: "Spend this winter in balmy Florida. Come to the Land of Perpetual Sunshine. Golf, tennis, driving, shooting, boating, fishing, all of the best."

There was more, but he had no heart for it; he was disappointed and puzzled. This picture had nothing to do with him. It was chance, and yet, what a strange chance! It troubled and upset him. His black, round-featured face took on deep wrinkles of perplexity. The "misery" that had hung darkly on his horizon for weeks engulfed him without warning. But in the bitterness of his melancholy, he at last knew his disease. It wasn't champagne or recreation he needed, not even a "po'k-chop," though his desire for it had been a symptom, a groping for a too-homeopathic remedy: he was homesick.

Easy, childish tears came to his eyes and ran over his shining cheeks. He shivered forlornly with a sudden sense of cold and absently clutched at the lapels of his gorgeous, fur-lined ulster.

Then, in abrupt reaction, he laughed aloud, so that the shrill, musical falsetto startled passersby, and in another moment a small semicircle of the curious watched spellbound as a black man, exquisitely appareled, danced in wild, loose grace before the dull background of a somewhat grimy and apparently vacant window. A newsboy recognized him.

He heard his name being passed from mouth to mouth and came partly to his senses. He stopped dancing and grinned at them.

"Say, you are Gideon, ain't you?" his discoverer demanded with reverent audacity.

"Yaas, seh," said Gideon; "that's me. Yo' shu got it right." He broke into a joyous peal of laughter—the laughter that had made him famous—and bowed deeply. "Gideon—positive-ly his las' puffawmunce." Turning, he dashed for a passing trolley and swung aboard, still laughing.

He was naturally honest. In a land of easy morality, his friends had considered him something of a paragon; Stuhk had never had anything but praise for him. But now he crushed aside the ethics of his intention without a troubled thought. Running away has always been inherent in the Negro. He gave one regretful thought to the gorgeous wardrobe he was leaving behind, but he dared not return for it. Stuhk might have gone back to their rooms. He had to content himself with the reflection that he was wearing his best at that moment.

The trolley seemed too slow for him, and, as always happened nowadays, he was recognized; he heard his name whispered and was aware of admiring glances. Even popularity had its drawbacks. He got down in front of a big hotel and chose a taxicab from the waiting rank, urging the driver to make his best speed to the station. Leaning back in the soft depths, he savored his independence, already cheered by the lurching speed. At the station he tipped the driver in lordly fashion, very pleased with himself and eager to give pleasure. Only the sternest prudence and an unconquerable awe of uniform kept him from tossing bills to the traffic policemen who seemed to smile on his haste.

No through train left for hours; but after the initial disappointment of momentary check, he decided he was more pleased than otherwise. It would save embarrassment. He was going South, where his color would be more considered than his reputation, and on the little local he chose there was a "Jim Crow" car—one set aside for his race. That it proved crowded and smoky didn't trouble him at all, nor did the admiring pleasantries his splendid apparel called forth. No one knew him; indeed, he was naturally mistaken for a prosperous gambler, a not unflattering supposition. As the train pulled out, he saw his private car under a glaring arc light and grinned to see it left behind.

He spent the night pleasantly in a noisy game of high-low-jack, and the next morning slept more soundly than he had for weeks, hunched on a wooden bench in the boxlike station of a North Carolina junction. The express would have brought him to Jacksonville in twenty-four hours; the journey as he took it, boarding any local going south and leaving it for meals, sleep, or whim, filled five happy days. Then he took a night train and dozed from Jacksonville until just north of New Smyrna.

He awoke to broad daylight, the car half empty. The train sat on a siding with news of a freight wreck ahead. Gideon stretched and looked out the window, and emotion seized him. All the way south, the region had seemed to welcome him, but here at last was the country he knew. He went out on the platform, threw back his head, and sniffed the soft breeze, heavy with the mysterious thrill of unplowed acres and the wondrous existence of primordial jungle, where life had rioted unceasingly above unceasing decay. It was dry with the fine dust of waste places and wet with the warm mists of slumbering swamps; it seemed to tremble with the songs of birds, the dry murmur of palm leaves, and the almost inaudible whisper of gray moss festooning the live oaks.

"Um-m-m," he murmured, apostrophizing it, "yo' 's the right kind o' breeze, yo' is. Yo'-all's healthy." Still sniffing, he climbed down to the dusty roadbed.

The Negroes who had ridden with him sprawled on the ground nearby; one lay sleeping face-up in the sunlight. The train had evidently been there awhile, with no sign of immediate departure. He bought oranges from a little bowlegged black boy and sat on a log to eat them, giving himself over to enjoyment. The sun was hot; his thoughts were vague and drowsy. He was glad to be alive, glad to be back among familiar scenes. Down the train, white passengers from the Pullmans paced restlessly, getting in and out of cars, consulting watches, gesturing at officials; but their impatience found no echo in him. What was the hurry? There was plenty of time. It was enough to have come to his own land; the actual walls of home could wait. The delay was pleasant, with its opportunity for drowsy sunning, relief from grimy travel.

He glanced at the orange-colored "Jim Crow" with distaste, and inspiration, dawning slowly, swept all other thought before it in its great and growing glory.

A brakeman passed, and Gideon leaped to his feet and pursued him. "Misteh, how long yo'-all reckon this train goin' to be?"

"About an hour."

The question was mere form. Gideon had made up his mind, and if told they'd start in five minutes, he wouldn't have changed it. He climbed back into the car for coat and hat, then almost furtively slipped down the steps and into the palmetto scrub.

"'Most made the mistake of ma life," he chuckled, "stickin' to that ol' train foheveh. 'Tisn't the right way at all foh Gideon to come home."

The river wasn't far. He caught glimpses of its dancing blue through the trees and steered straight for it. His heavy coat was on his arm; his thin patent-leather shoes pinched and burned, demanding detours around swampy places, but he was happy.

As he walked, his plan took shape. He would get loose shoes again, old ones, if money could buy them, and old clothes too. The bull-briers snatching at his tailored splendor suggested that.

He laughed when a Florida partridge, a small quail, whirred from under his feet; he paused to exchange affectionate mockery with red squirrels; once, even when a familiar, ominous dry rattle sounded—the small, crisp sound of a rattlesnake—he didn't look for a weapon, but peered over the log ahead and spoke in tolerant admonition:

"Now, Misteh Rattlesnake, yo' jes min' yo' own business. Nobody's goin' step on yo', ner go triflin' roun' yo' in no way whatsomeveh. Yo' jes lay there in the sun an' git 's fat 's yo' please. Don' yo' tu'n yo' weeked li'l' eyes on Gideon. He's jes goin' 'long home, an' ain' lookin' foh no muss."

Presently he came to the water and, luckily, to a group of Negro cabins, where he was able to buy old clothes and, after much haggling, a long, somewhat leaky rowboat with a tattered leg-of-mutton sail. He provisioned it with a jug of water, a starch box of white cornmeal, and a wide strip of lean razorback bacon.

As he pushed out from shore and set his sail to the small breeze from the north, absolute contentment possessed him. The lagoon's idle waters, lying without tide or current in eternal indolence, rippled and sparkled in breeze and sunlight, seeming to lap the leaky boat faster on its way. Mosquito Inlet opened broadly before him; skirting the end of Merritt's Island, he entered the longest lagoon, the Indian River, which he knew best. Here the wind died to a mere breath, barely moving the boat, but he didn't row. As long as he moved, he was satisfied. He was living the fulfillment of his dreams in exile, lounging in the stern in old clothes, feet stretched comfortably before him in broken shoes, one foot on a thwart, the other hanging over the side so lazily that ripples lapped the run-over heel.

From time to time he scanned shore and river for familiar landmarks—a remembered snag showing its gnarled branch tip, a newly fallen palmetto rotting in the water to add to his mental map. But mostly his broad black face was turned up to the blue brilliance above in unblinking contemplation; his keen eyes, brilliant despite sun-muddied whites, reveled in the heights, following a file of little bluebill ducks, a pair of mallards or redheads, the soaring circles of a bald eagle, or scattered squadrons of herons—white and blue, young and old—trailing in sunlit patches even against the bright sky.

Often he laughed aloud, sending great shouts of mirth across the water in fresh relish of the comedies he knew best. It was as funny as ever when his boat nosed into a flock of idling ducks, their mad paddling haste, reproachful head turns, and, if he came too close, their splattering run across the water, feet and wings pumping as they rose, looking like fat little women scurrying with clutched skirts across a city street. The pelicans delighted him too, perched with pedantic solemnity on wharf piles or sailing in hunched gravity twenty feet above the river, their dignified flight ending in an abrupt, up-ended plunge that threw dignity to the winds in greedy haste.

When darkness came at last, he made for shore, mooring to the warm-fretted end of a fallen, forgotten landing. A straggling orange grove was here, broken lines of vanquished cultivation, struggling little trees swathed and choked in festooning gray moss, still showing here and there the valiant golden gleam of fruit. Gideon had seen many such places: settlers coming, clearing space in the jungle, planting groves, living in lazy independence, then leaving for some reason, the jungle creeping back to restore its ancient sovereignty. The place was eerie with the ghost of dead effort, but it pleased him.

He made a fire and cooked supper, eating enormously. His conscience didn't trouble him at all; Stuhk and his career seemed distant, small in his thoughts, merely a background for his absolute contentment. He picked oranges and ate them meditatively. For a while he nodded half-asleep by the fire, watching the darkened river where mullet, shimmering with phosphorescence, leaped starkly and fell in splattering brilliance. Midnight found him sprawled asleep.

Once he woke. The moon had risen, and a breeze waved the hanging moss, whispering in the glossy foliage like falling rain. Gideon sat up and peered about, rolling his eyes at the menacing leap and dance of black shadows. His heart beat thickly, muscles twitched, and awful terrors of night pulsed over him. Nameless specters peered from every shadow, ancient familiars of his forgotten blood. He groaned aloud in delicious terror, and presently, still twitching, fell asleep again. It was as if something magical had happened; his fear remembered centuries of fear, yet with warm daylight it was utterly forgotten.

He rose shortly after sunrise and went to the river to bathe, diving deep with a joyful sense of freeing himself from the last alien dust of travel. Back on shore, he prepared breakfast with some haste, feeling loneliness for the first time and a longing for his kind. He was still happy, but his laughter echoed strangely in the solitude. He tried the defiant experiment of laughing for its effect, which brought him to his feet in startled terror—his laugh was echoed. As he peered about, the sound came again, not laughter but a suppressed giggle. It was human, beyond doubt. Gideon's face shone with relief and amusement. He listened, then strode toward a clump of low palms. At its edge, every sense alert, he caught a soft rustle, a little gasp of fear, the cautious move of a foot.

"Missy," he said tentatively, "I reckon yo'-all's come jes 'bout 'n time foh breakfus. Yo' betteh have some. Ef yo' ain' too white to sit down with a black man."

The leaves parted, and a smiling face, as black as Gideon's own, regarded him in shy amusement. "Who is yo', man?"

"I mought be king of Kongo," he laughed, "but I ain't. Yo' see befo' yo' jes Gideon—at yo'r 'steemed sehvice." He bowed elaborately in mock humility, watching for her reaction.

But neither awe nor rapture dawned there. She repeated the name, tilting her head coquettishly, but it evidently meant nothing to her. She was simply trying its sound. "Gideon, Gideon. I don' call to min' any sech name ez that. Yo'-all's f'om up No' th likely." He was beyond the reach of fame.

"No," said Gideon, hardly knowing whether he was glad or sorry. "No, I live south of heah. What-all's yo' name?"

The girl giggled deliciously. "Man," she said, "I shu got the most reediculoustest name you eveh did heah. They call me Vashti—yo' bacon's bu'nin'." She stepped out and ran past him to snatch the skillet from the fire.

"Vashti"—a strange, delightful name. Gideon followed slowly, pleased by her romantic arrival and name; and he thought her beautiful too. She was barely more than a girl, slim and strong, almost his height. Barefoot, she wore a clean blue-checked gingham dress belted tightly at a small waist. He remembered only one woman who moved as lithely—one of the diving beauties of the vaudeville stage.

She cooked breakfast, while he served her with elaborate gallantry, showing off his new, cosmopolitan graces, garnishing his speech with imposing polysyllables, casting over the meal a radiant aura of grandeur borrowed from his recent fame. He saw that he pleased her, and her open admiration spurred him to greater flights of polished manners.

He made vague plans to delay his journey as they sat smoking in pleasant conversation, and was annoyed when an interruption came.

"Vashty! Vashty!" a woman's voice sounded thin and far. "Vashty-y! Yo' heah me, chile?"

Vashti rose with a sigh. "That's my ma," she said regretfully.

"What do yo' care?" asked Gideon. "Let her yell awhile."

The girl shook her head. "Ma's a moughty pow'ful 'oman, and she done got a club 'bout the size o' my wrist." She moved away a step and glanced back.

Gideon leaped to his feet. "When yo' comin' back? Yo'—yo' ain' goin' without—" He reached for her, but she only giggled and began walking slowly off. He bounded after her, catching her lightly by the shoulder. He suddenly felt he mustn't lose sight of her.

"Let me go! Tu'n me loose, yo'!" The girl was still laughing but clearly troubled. She wrenched free, only to be caught again. As he kissed her, she screamed and struck at him, truly terrified now.

The blow caught Gideon squarely in the mouth, so hard he staggered back, astonished, and the girl fled. He stood a moment, uncertain, as something stirred within him. For months he had gently avoided love; now, with the savage crash of that blow, he knew without reasoning that he had found his woman.

He lunged after her, running as he hadn't run in years, tearing through briers and scrub, tripping, falling, rising, never losing sight of the blue figure until she tripped and fell, and he stood over her, panting.

He caught his breath, bent down, and lifted her into his arms. She screamed, struck, and scratched at him. He laughed, feeling beyond pain, and picked his way carefully back to the shore, wading deep to unmoor his boat.

With a swift movement, he dropped the girl into the bow, shoved off, clambered aboard, and put out into the river.

The light morning breeze had freshened, and he made toward the middle of the stream, ignoring the hallooing now audible from shore. His exertions had quickened his breath, but he felt strong and joyful. Vashti lay crumpled in the bow, sobbing in fear and desolation, but he didn't try to comfort her. He felt no sense of wrong; he was simply and unreasoningly satisfied. Despite his gentle, easygoing, laughter-loving existence, he saw nothing incongruous in this sudden violence. He glowed with happiness; he was taking home a wife. The blind tumult of capture had passed; a great tenderness possessed him.

The leaky boat plunged and danced in swift ecstasy; little waves glittered in the sun, plashing against the sides, tossing tiny crests to the following wind, blowing handfuls of foam. Gideon tended the small sail and returned to the steering seat. He would soon need to find shelter along the western shore, but he lingered midriver because each mile brought more familiar banks, calling him on. Vashti's sobs softened and ceased; he wondered if she slept.

Then he saw her face raise—still shiny with tears. Noticing his gaze, she ducked low again. A dash of spray wet her, and she looked up, then once more met his eyes. After a moment she rose, still crouched, and made her slow way down the boat to him. Gideon moved over, and she sank beside him, hiding her face in her gingham sleeve.

Gideon reached out a broad hand and touched her head; with a tiny gasp, her fingers stole up to his.

"Honey," said Gideon. "Honey, yo' ain' mad, is yo'?"

She shook her head without looking.

"Yo' ain' grievin' foh yo' ma?"

Again she shook her head.

"Because," said Gideon, smiling down, "I ain' got no beeg club like she has."

A soft, smothered giggle answered, and Vashti looked up and laid her head against him with a small sigh of contentment.

Gideon felt very tender, very important, at peace with himself and the world. He rounded a jutting point and stretched out a black hand, pointing.