Chapter 2

We heard no more of the voices. Uncle Eb had brought an armful
of wood, and some water in the teapot, while I was sleeping. As
soon as the rain had passed he stood listening awhile and shortly
opened his knife and made a little clearing in the corn by cutting a
few hills.

'We've got to do it,' he said, 'er we can't take any comfort, an' the
man tol' me I could have all the corn I wanted.'

'Did you see him, Uncle Eb?' I remember asking.

'Yes,' he answered, whittling in the dark. 'I saw him when I went
out for the water an' it was he tol' me they were after us.'

He took a look at the sky after a while, and, remarking that he
guessed they couldn't see his smoke now, began to kindle the fire.
As it burned up he stuck two crotches and hung his teapot on a
stick' that lay in them, so it took the heat of the flame, as I had seen
him do in the morning. Our grotto, in the corn, was shortly as
cheerful as any room in a palace, and our fire sent its light into the
long aisles that opened opposite, and nobody could see the warm
glow of it but ourselves.

'We'll hev our supper,' said Uncle Eb, as he opened a paper and
spread out the eggs and bread and butter and crackers. 'We'll jest
hev our supper an' by 'n by when everyone's abed we'll make tracks
in the dirt, I can tell ye.'

Our supper over, Uncle Eb let me look at his tobacco-box - a shiny
thing of German silver that always seemed to snap out a quick
farewell to me before it dove into his pocket. He was very cheerful
and communicative, and joked a good deal as we lay there waiting
in the firelight. I got some further acquaintance with the swift,
learning among other things that it had no appetite for the pure in
heart.

'Why not?' I enquired.

'Well,' said Uncle Eb, 'it's like this: the meaner the boy, the sweeter
the meat.'

He sang an old song as he sat by the fire, with a whistled interlude
between lines, and the swing of it, even now, carries me back to
that far day in the fields. I lay with my head in his lap while he was
singing.

Years after, when I could have carried him on my back' he wrote
down for me the words of the old song. Here they are, about as he
sang them, although there are evidences of repair, in certain lines,
to supply the loss of phrases that had dropped out of his memory:

I was goin' to Salem one bright summer day,
I met a young maiden a goin' my way;
O, my fallow, faddeling fallow, faddel away.

An' many a time I had seen her before,
But I never dare tell 'er the love thet I bore.
O, my fallow, etc.

'Oh, where are you goin' my purty fair maid?'
'O, sir, I am goin' t' Salem,' she said.
O, my fallow, etc.

'O, why are ye goin' so