Chapter 32

CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like,
and hot and sunshiny; the hands was gone to
the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings
of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lone-
some and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a
breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you
feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whisper-
ing -- spirits that's been dead ever so many years --
and you always think they're talking about YOU. As a
general thing it makes a body wish HE was dead, too,
and done with it all.

Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plan-
tations, and they all look alike. A rail fence round a
two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and
up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length, to
climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand
on when they are going to jump on to a horse; some
sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was
bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed
off; big double log-house for the white folks -- hewed
logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar,
and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or
another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open
but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-
house back of the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins
in a row t'other side the smoke-house; one little hut
all by itself away down against the back fence, and
some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-
hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut;
bench by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a
gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds
asleep round about; about three shade trees away off
in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry
bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence
a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton
fields begins, and after the fields the woods.

I went around and clumb over the back stile by the
ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen. When I got
a little ways I heard the dim hum of a spinning-wheel
wailing along up and sinking along down again; and
then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead -- for
that IS the lonesomest sound in the whole world.

I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan,
but just trusting to Providence to put the right words
in my mouth when the time come; for I'd noticed that
Providence always did put the right words in my mouth
if I left it alone.

When I got half-way, first one hound and then
another got up and went for me, and of course I
stopped and faced them, and kept still. And such
another powwow as they made! In a quarter of a
minute I was a kind of a hub