Читать книгу On the Plantation - Joel Chandler Harris - Страница 6

“Well,” said the editor, laughing, “that is his house. When you get a little older you’ll find people who are more disappointing than the high sheriff. Boys are sometimes too big for their breeches, I’ve heard said, but this is the first time I ever heard that a man could be too big for his house. That is a good one on the colonel.”

Ben Bolt trotted along steadily and rapidly, but after a while dusk fell, and then the stars came out. Joe peered ahead, trying to make out the road.

“Just let the horse have his way,” said the editor. “He knows the road better than I do”; and it seemed to be so, for, when heavy clouds from the west came up and hid the stars, and only the darkness was visible, Ben Bolt trotted along as steadily as ever. He splashed through Crooked Creek, walked up the long hill, and then started forward more rapidly than ever.

“It is a level road, now,” the editor remarked, “and Ben Bolt is on the home-stretch.”

In a little while he stopped before a large gate. It was opened in a jiffy by some one who seemed to be waiting.

“Is that you, Harbert?” asked the editor.

“Yes, marster.”

“Well, I want you to take Mr. Maxwell here to Mr. Snelson’s.”

“Yasser,” responded the negro.

“Snelson is the foreman of the printing-office,” the editor explained to Joe, “and for the present you are to board with him. I hope he will make things pleasant for you. Goodnight.”

To the lonely lad it seemed a long journey to Mr. Sneison’s—through wide plantation gates, down narrow lanes, along a bit of public road, and then a plunge into the depths of a great wood, where presently a light gleamed through.

“I’ll hail ’em,” said Harbert, and he sent before him into the darkness a musical halloo, whereupon, as promptly as its echo, came a hearty response from the house, with just the faintest touch of the Irish brogue in the voice.

“Ah, and it’s the young man! Jump right down and come in to the warmth of the fire. There’s something hot on the hearth, where it’s waiting you.”

And so Joe Maxwell entered on a new life—a life as different as possible from that which he had left behind in Hillsborough.