The old Opp House stood high on the river-bank and gazed lonesomely out into the summer night. It was a shabby, down-at-heel, dejected-looking place, with one side showing faint lights, above and below, but the other side so nailed up and empty and useless that it gave the place the appearance of being paralyzed down one side and of having scarcely enough vitality left to sustain life in the other.

To make matters worse, an old hound howled dismally on the door-step, only stopping occasionally to paw at the iron latch and to whimper for the master whose unsteady footsteps he had followed for thirteen years.

In the front room a shaded lamp, [p37] turned low, threw a circle of light on the table and floor, leaving the corners full of vague, uncertain shadows. From the wide, black fireplace a pair of rusty and battered andirons held out empty arms, and on the high stone shelf above the opening, flanked on each side by a stuffed owl, was a tall, square-faced clock, with the hour-hand missing. The minute-hand still went on its useless round, and behind it, on the face of the clock, a tiny schooner with all sail set rocked with the swinging of the pendulum.

The loud ticking of the clock, and the lamentations of the hound without, were not the only sounds that disturbed the night. Before the empty fireplace, in a high-backed, cane-bottomed chair, slept an old negress, with head bowed, moaning and muttering as she slept. She was bent and ashen with age, and her brown skin sagged in long wrinkles from her face and hands. On her forehead, reaching from brow to faded turban, was a hideous testimony to some ancient conflict. A large, irregular hole, over which [p38] the flesh had grown, pulsed as sentiently and imperatively as a naked, living heart.

A shutter slammed sharply somewhere in the house above, and something stirred fearfully in the shadow of the room. It was a small figure that crouched against the wall, listening and watching with the furtive terror of a newly captured coyote—the slight figure of a woman dressed as a child, with short gingham dress, and heelless slippers, and a bright ribbon holding back the limp, flaxen hair from her strange, pinched face.

Again and again her wide, frightened eyes sought the steps leading to the room above, and sometimes she would lean forward and whisper in agonized expectancy, “Daddy?” Then when no answer came, she would shudder back against the wall, cold and shaking and full of dumb terrors.

Suddenly the hound’s howling changed to a sharp bark, and the old negress stirred and stretched herself.

“What ails dat air dog?” she [p39] mumbled, going to the window, and shading her eyes with her hand. “You’d ’low to hear him tell it he done heared old master coming up de road.”

That somebody was coming was evident from the continued excitement of the hound, and when the gate slammed and a man’s voice sounded in the darkness, Aunt Tish opened the door, throwing a long, dim patch of light out across the narrow porch and over the big, round stepping-stones beyond.

Into the light came Mr. Opp, staggering under the load of his baggage, his coat over his arm, his collar off, thoroughly spent with the events of the day.

“Lord ’a’ mercy!” said Aunt Tish, “if hit ain’t Mr. D.! I done give you up long ago. I certainly is glad you come. Miss Kippy’s jes carrying on like ever’thing. She ain’t been to baid for two nights, an’ I can’t do nothin’ ’t all wif her.”

Mr. Opp deposited his things in a corner, and, tired as he was, assumed an air of authority. It was evident that a man [p40] was needed, a person of firmness, of decision.

“I’ll see that she goes to bed at once,” he said resolutely. “Where is she at?”

“She’s behind de door,” said Aunt Tish; “she’s be’n so skeered ever sence her paw died I can’t do nothin’ wif her.”

“Kippy,” said Mr. Opp, sternly, “come out here this minute.”

But there was no response. Going to the corner where his coat lay, he took from the pocket a brown-paper parcel.

“Say, Kippy,” he said in a greatly mollified tone, “I wish you would come on out here and see me. You remember brother D., don’t you? You ought to see what I brought you all the way from the city. It’s got blue eyes.”

At this the small, grotesque figure, distrustful, suspicious, ready to take flight at a word, ventured slowly forth. So slight she was, and so frail, and so softly she moved, it was almost as if the wind blew her toward him. Every thought that came into her brain was instantly reflected in her hypersensitive face, and [p41] as she stood before him nervously plucking her fingers, fear and joy struggled for supremacy. Suddenly with a low cry she snatched the doll from him and clasped it to her heart.

Meanwhile Aunt Tish had spread a cloth on the table and set forth some cold corn dodger, a pitcher of foaming butter-milk, and a plate of cold corned beef. The milk was in a battered pewter pitcher, but the dish that held the corn bread was of heavy silver, with intricate chasings about the rim.

Mr. Opp, with his head propped on his hand, ate wearily. He had been up since four o’clock that morning, and to-morrow he must be up at daybreak if he was to keep his engagements to supply the dealers with the greatest line of shoes ever put upon the market. Between now and then he must decide many things: Kippy must be planned for, the house gone over, and arrangements made for the future. Being behind the scenes, as it were, and having no spectator to impress, he allowed himself to sink into an [p42] attitude of extreme dejection. And Mr. Opp, shorn of the dignity of his heavily padded coat, and his imposing collar and tie, and with even his pompadour limp upon his forehead, failed entirely to give a good imitation of himself.

As he sat thus, with one hand hanging limply over the back of the chair, he felt something touch it softly, dumbly, as a dog might. Looking down, he discovered Miss Kippy sitting on the floor, close behind him, watching him with furtive eyes. In one arm she cradled the new doll, and in the other she held his coat.

Mr. Opp patted her cheek: “Whatever are you doing with my coat?” he asked.

Miss Kippy held it behind her, and nodded her head wisely: “Keeping it so you can’t go away,” she whispered. “I’ll hold it tight all night. To-morrow I’ll hide it.”

“But I’m a business man,” said Mr. Opp, unconsciously straightening his shoulders. “A great deal of responsibility depends on me. I’ve got to be off [p43] early in the morning; but I’m coming back to see you real often—every now and then.”

Miss Kippy’s whole attitude changed. She caught his hand and clung to it, and the terror came back to her eyes.

“You mustn’t go,” she whispered, her body quivering with excitement. “It’ll get me if you do. Daddy kept It away, and you can keep It away; but Aunt Tish can’t: she’s afraid of It, too! She goes to sleep, and then It reaches at me through the window. It comes down the chimney, there—where you see the brick’s loose. Don’t leave me, D. Hush, don’t you hear It?”

Her voice had risen to hysteria, and she clung to him, cold and shaken by the fear that possessed her.

Mr. Opp put a quieting arm about her. “Why, see here, Kippy,” he said, “didn’t you know It was afraid of me? Look how strong I am! I could kill It with my little finger.”

“Could you?” asked Miss Kippy, fearfully.[p44]
“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Opp. “Don’t you ever be scared of anything whatsoever when Brother D.’s round. I’m going to take care of you from now on.”

“This me is bad,” announced Miss Kippy; “the other me is good. Her name is Oxety; she has one blue eye and one brown.”

“Well, Oxety must go to bed now,” said Mr. Opp; “it must be getting awful late.”

But Miss Kippy shook her head. “You might go ’way,” she said.

Finding that he could not persuade her, Mr. Opp resorted to strategy: “I’ll tell you what let’s me and you do. Let’s put your slippers on your hands.”

This proposition met with instant approval. It appealed to Miss Kippy as a brilliant suggestion. She assisted in unbuttoning the single straps and watched with glee as they were fastened about her wrists.

[p45]

“‘Don’t leave me’”

“Now,” said Mr. Opp, with assumed enthusiasm, “we’ll make the slippers [p47] walk you up-stairs, and after Aunt Tish undresses you, they shall walk you to bed. Won’t that be fun?”

Miss Kippy’s fancy was so tickled by this suggestion that she put it into practice at once, and went gaily forth up the steps on all fours. At the turn she stopped, and looked at him wistfully:

“You’ll come up before I go to sleep?” she begged; “Daddy did.”

Half an hour later Aunt Tish came down the narrow stairway: “She done gone to baid now, laughin’ an’ happy ag’in,” she said; “she never did have dem spells when her paw was round, an’ sometimes dat chile jes as clear in her mind as you an’ me is.”

“What is it she’s afraid of?” asked Mr. Opp.

Aunt Tish leaned toward him across the table, and the light of the lamp fell full upon her black, bead-like eyes, and her sunken jaws, and on the great palpitating scar.

“De ghosties,” she whispered; “dey been worriting dat chile ever’ chance dey [p48] git. I hear ’em! Dey wait till I take a nap of sleep, den dey comes sneakin’ in to pester her. She says dey ain’t but one, but I hears heaps ob ’em, some ob ’em so little dey kin climb onder de crack in de door.”

“Look a-here, Aunt Tish,” said Mr. Opp, sternly, “don’t you ever talk a word of this foolishness to her again. Not one word, do you hear?”

“Yas, sir; dat’s what Mr. Moore allays said, an’ I don’t talk to her ’bout hit, I don’t haf to. She done knows I know. I been livin’ heah goin’ on forty years, sence ’fore you was borned, an’ you can’t fool me, chile; no, sir, dat you can’t.”

“Well, you must go to bed now,” said Mr. Opp, looking up at the clock and seeing that it was half-past something though he did not know what.

“I never goes to baid when I stays here,” announced Aunt Tish; “I sets up in de kitchen an’ sleeps. I’s skeered dat chile run away; she ’low she gwine to some day. Her paw ketched her oncet [p49] gittin’ in a boat down on de river-bank. She ain’t gwine, while I’s here, no sir-ee! I never leaves her in de daytime an’ her paw never leaves her at night, dat is, when he’s livin’.”

After she had gone, Mr. Opp ascended the stairway, and entered the room above. A candle sputtered on the table, and in its light he saw the wide, four-poster bed that had been his mother’s, and in it the frail figure of little Miss Kippy. Her hair lay loose upon the pillow, and on her sleeping face, appealing in its helplessness, was a smile of perfect peace. The new doll lay on the table beside the candle, but clasped tightly in her arms was the coat of many checks.

For a moment Mr. Opp stood watching her, then he drew his shirt-sleeve quickly across his eyes. As he turned to descend, his new shoes creaked painfully and, after he had carefully removed them, he tiptoed down, passed through the sitting-room and out upon the porch, where he sank down on the step and dropped his head on his arms.[p50]
The night was very still, save for the croaking of a bullfrog, and the incessant scraping of a cedar-tree against the corner of the roof. From across the river, faint sparks of light shone out from cabin windows, and, below, a moving light now and then told of a passing scow. Once a steamboat slipped weirdly out of the darkness, sparkling with lights, and sending up faint sounds of music; but before the waves from the wheel had ceased to splash on the bank below, she was swallowed up in the darkness, leaving lonesomeness again.

Mr. Opp sat staring out into the night, outwardly calm, but inwardly engaged in a mortal duel. The aggressive Mr. Opp of the gorgeous raiment and the seal ring, the important man of business, the ambitious financier, was in deadly combat with the insignificant Mr. Opp, he of the shirt-sleeves and the wilted pompadour, the delicate, sensitive, futile Mr. Opp who was incapable of everything but the laying down of his life for the sake of another.[p51]
A dull line of light hovered on the horizon, and gradually the woods on the opposite shore took shape, then the big river itself, gray and shimmering, with streaks on the water where a snag broke the swift current.

“Mr. D.,” he heard Aunt Tish calling up the back stairs, “you better git out of baid; hit’s sun-up.”

He rose stiffly and started back to the kitchen. As he passed through the front room, his eyes fell upon his new suit-case full of the treasured drummers’ samples. Stooping down, he traced the large black letters with his finger and sighed deeply.

Then he got up resolutely and marched to the kitchen door.

“Aunt Tish,” he said with authority, “you needn’t mind about hurrying breakfast. I find there’s very important business will keep me here in the Cove for the present.”