Two boys and a dog sat at the edge of a little wood and shiveringly watched the eastern sky pale from inky blue to gray. One of the boys was white and the other was black; and the dog was yellow. The white boy was seventeen years old, the black boy sixteen, and the yellow dog—well, no one knew just how old he was. The white boy’s name was Wayne Torrence Sloan, the black boy’s name was Junius Brutus Bartow Tasker, and the dog’s name was Sam. An hour ago they had been rudely awakened from their sleep in a box car and more rudely driven forth into cold and darkness and mystery. They had had no complaint to make, for they had lain undisturbed in the car ever since the middle of the previous afternoon; and between that time and an hour ago had rumbled and jolted over miles and miles of track, just how many miles there was no way of telling until, having learned their present whereabouts, Wayne should puzzle out the matter of distance on the frayed and tattered time-table in his pocket. Travelling as they had travelled, on foot or stealing rides when the chance offered, makes a philosopher of one, and instead of objecting to the fate that had overtaken them when a suspicious train hand had flashed his lantern into the gloomy recesses of the box car, they had departed hurriedly and in silence, being thankful that the exodus had not been forced on them long before.

Minute by minute the sky brightened. The steely gray became softer in tone and began to flush with a suggestion of rose. The stars paled. A wan gleam of approaching daylight fell on one burnished rail of the track which lay a few rods distant. The trees behind them took on form and substance and their naked branches became visibly detailed against the sky. The dog whined softly and curled himself tighter in Wayne’s arms. Wayne stretched the corner of his gray sweater over the thin back and eased himself from the cramped position against the trunk of a small tree.

“What would you do, June, if someone came along about now with a can of hot coffee?” he asked, breaking the silence that had lasted for many minutes. The negro boy aroused from his half doze and flashed the whites of his eyes in the gloom.

“Mas’ Wayne,” he answered fervently, “I’d jus’ about love that Mister Man. M-m-mm! Hot coffee! Lawsy-y! You reckon it ever goin’ to get lightsome, Mas’ Wayne?”

“I reckon we can start along pretty soon now, June. Whereabouts do you suspect we are?”

“I reckon we must be gettin’ mighty nigh New York. How far was we yesterday?”

“’Most two hundred and fifty miles. If we’d just kept right on going all night we might have been in New York right now, but that freight was standing still more times than it was moving, I reckon. Look yonder, June. Daylight’s surely coming, isn’t it?”

Junius Brutus Bartow Tasker turned an obedient gaze toward the east, but his reply was pessimistic. A negro who is cold is generally pessimistic, and June was certainly cold. Unlike Wayne, he had no sweater under his shabby jacket, nor was there much of anything else under it, for the coarse gingham shirt offered little resistance to the chill of the March night, and June and undershirts had long been strangers. Early spring in southern Georgia is a different matter from the same season up North, a fact which neither boy had allowed for.

“I reckon Christmas is comin’ too,” muttered June gloomily, “but it’s a powerful long way off. How come the nights is so long up here, Mas’ Wayne?”

“I reckon there isn’t any difference, not really,” answered Wayne. “They just seem like they were longer. Sam, you wake up and stretch yourself. We’re going to travel again pretty soon now. Go catch yourself a rabbit or something.”

The dog obeyed instructions so far as stretching himself was concerned, and, after finding that he was not to be allowed to return to the warmth of his master’s lap, even set off in a half-hearted, shivering fashion to explore the surrounding world.

“I reckon he can projeck ’roun’ a mighty long time before he starts a rabbit,” said June discouragedly. “It’s a powerful mean-lookin’ country up this way, ain’ it? What state you-all reckons we’s in, Mas’ Wayne?”

Wayne shook his head. Shaking his head was very easy because he only had to let the tremors that were agitating the rest of him extend above the turned-up collar of his jacket! “I reckon it might be Maryland, June. Somewheres around there, anyway.” He felt for the time-table in his pocket, but he didn’t bring it forth for it was still too dark to read. “I ’most wish I was back home, June,” he went on wistfully, after a minute’s silence. “I sure do!”

“I done told you we hadn’t no business comin’ up this yere way. Ain’ nothin’ up here but Northerners, I reckon. If we’d gone West like I said we’d been a heap better off.”

“Nobody asked you to come, anyway,” responded Wayne sharply. “There wasn’t any reason for you coming. You—you just butted in!”

As there was no denying that statement, June wisely chose to change the subject. “Reckon someone’s goin’ to give us some breakfast pretty soon?” he asked.

But Wayne had a grievance now and, feeling a good deal more homesick than he had thought he ever could feel, and a lot colder and emptier than was pleasant, he nursed it. “I couldn’t stay there any longer and slave for that man,” he said. “I stuck it out as long as I could. Ever since mother died it’s been getting worse and worse. He hasn’t got any hold on me, anyway. Stepfathers aren’t kin. I had a right to run away if I wanted to, and he can’t fetch me back, not anyway, not even by law!”

“No, sir, he can’,” agreed June soothingly.

“But you didn’t have any right to run away, June. You——”

“How come I ain’t” demanded the negro. “He ain’ no kin to me, neither, is he? I was jus’ a-workin’ for him. Mister Higgins ain’ got no more ’sponsibility about me than he has about you, Mas’ Wayne.”

“Just the same, June, he can fetch you back if he ever catches you.”

“Can, can he? Let me tell you somethin’. He ain’ goin’ to catch me! Nobody ain’ goin’ to catch me! Coloured folkses is free an’ independent citizens, ain’ they? Ain’ they, Mas’ Wayne?”

“Maybe they’re free,” answered his companion grimly, “but if you get to acting independent I’ll just about lick the hide off you! I ought to have done it back yonder and sent you home where you belong.”

“I’se where I belong right now,” replied June stoutly. “Ain’ we been together ever since we was jus’ little fellers, Mas’ Wayne? Wasn’ my mammy your mammy’s nigger for years an’ years? How come I ain’ got no right here? Ain’ my mammy always say to me, ‘You Junius Brutus Tasker, you watch out for Young Master an’ don’ you ever let no harm come to him, ’cause if you do I’ll tan your hide’? Ain’ she always tell me that ever since I was so high? What you think I was goin’ to do, Mas’ Wayne, when I seen you sneakin’ off that night? Wasn’ but jus’ one thing to do, was there? How you ’spects I was goin’ to watch out for you like my mammy tells me if I didn’ go along with you? Huh? So I jus’ track along till you get to the big road, an’ then I track along till you get to Summitty, and then I track along——”

“Yes, and you climbed into that freight car after me and the man saw you and we all got thrown out,” continued Wayne. “I reckon you meant all right, June, but what do you suppose I’m going to do with you up North here? I got to find work to do and it’s going to be hard enough to look after Sam here without having a pesky darkey on my hands. Best thing you can do is hike back home before you starve to death.”

“Huh! I ain’ never starved to death yet, Mas’ Wayne, an’ I ain’ lookin’ to. Jus’ like I told you heaps of times, you ain’ got to do no worryin’ about June. I reckon I can find me a job of work, too, can’ I? Reckon folkses has to plough an’ plant an’ pick their cotton up here jus’ like they does back home.”

“There isn’t any cotton in the North, June.”

“Ain’ no cotton?” ejaculated the other incredulously. “What all they plant up here, then, Mas’ Wayne?”

“Oh, apples, I reckon, and——”

“I can pick apples, then. I done pick peaches, ain’ I? What else they plant?”

“Why——” Wayne didn’t have a very clear notion himself, but it didn’t do to appear ignorant to June. “Why, they—they plant potatoes—white potatoes, you know—and—and peas and—oh, lots of things, I reckon.”

June pondered that in silence for a moment. Then: “But how come they don’t plant cotton?” he asked in puzzled tones.

“Too cold. It won’t grow for them up here.”

June gazed rather contemptuously about the gray morning landscape and grunted comprehendingly. “Uh-huh. Reckon I wouldn’t neither if I was a cotton plant! It surely is a mighty—mighty mean-lookin’ place, ain’ it?”

Well, it really was. Before them ran the railroad embankment, behind them was the little grove of bare trees and on either hand an uncultivated expanse of level field stretched away into the gray gloom. No habitation was as yet in sight. The telegraph poles showed spectrally against the dawn, and a little breeze, rising with the rising sun, made a moaning sound in the clustered wires. Sam came back from his profitless adventures and wormed himself between Wayne’s legs. June blew on his cold hands and crooned a song under his breath. The eastern sky grew lighter and lighter and suddenly, like a miracle, a burst of rose glow spread upward toward the zenith, turning the grayness into the soft hues of a dove’s breast! Wayne sprang to his feet, with an exclamation of pain as his cramped and chilled muscles responded to the demand, and stretched his arms and yawned prodigiously.

“Come along and let’s find that hot coffee, June,” he said almost cheerfully. “There must be a house somewhere around here, I reckon.”

“Sure must!” replied the other, falling instantly into Wayne’s humour. “Lawsy-y, I can jus’ taste that coffee now! Which way we goin’, Mas’ Wayne?”

Wayne stamped his feet on the still frosty ground and considered. At last: “North,” he replied, “and north’s over that way. Come along!”

He led the way back toward the track, followed by June and Sam, and after squeezing himself between the wires of a fence climbed the embankment and set off over the ties with a speed born of long practice. The rose hue was fast changing to gold now, and long rays of sunlight streamed upward heralding the coming of His Majesty the Sun; and against the glory of the eastern sky the three travellers stood out like animated silhouettes cut from blue-black cardboard as they trudged along—the white boy, the black boy, and the yellow dog.