The old sister took a long draw on her corn-cob pipe, and a fiery red spot glowed in its bowl, while Willie-Mae and Sandy stopped playing and sat down on the porch as she began a tale they had all heard at least a dozen times.

“I’s tole you ’bout it befo’, ain’t I?” asked Sister Johnson.

“Not me,” lied Jimboy, who was anxious to keep her going.

“No, you haven’t,” Harriett assured her.

“Well, it were like dis,” and the story unwound itself, the preliminary details telling how, as a young freed-girl after the Civil War, Sister Johnson had gone into service for a white planter’s family in a Mississippi town near Vicksburg. While attached to this family, she married Tom Johnson, then a field-hand, and raised five children of her own during the years that followed, besides caring for three boys belonging to her white mistress, nursing them at her black breasts and sometimes leaving her own young ones in the cabin to come and stay with her white charges when they were ill. These called her mammy, too, and when they were men and married, she still went to see them and occasionally worked for their families.

“Now, we niggers all lived at de edge o’ town in what de whites called Crowville, an’ most of us owned little houses an’ farms, an’ we did right well raisin’ cotton an’ sweet ’taters an’ all. Now, dat’s where de trouble started! We was doin’ too well, an’ de white folks said so! But we ain’t paid ’em no ’tention, jest thought dey was talkin’ fer de pastime of it.... Well, we all started fixin’ up our houses an’ paintin’ our fences, an’ Crowville looked kinder decent-like when de white folks ’gin to ’mark, so’s we servants could hear ’em, ’bout niggers livin’ in painted houses an’ dressin’ fine like we was somebody! . . . Well, dat went on for some time wid de whites talkin’ an’ de coloreds doin’ better’n better year by year, sellin’ mo’ cotton ever’ day an’ gittin’ nice furniture an’ buyin’ pianers, till by an’ by a prosp’rous nigger named John Lowdins up an’ bought one o’ dese here new automobiles—an’ dat settled it! . . . A white man in town one Sat’day night tole John to git out o’ dat damn car ’cause a nigger ain’t got no business wid a autimobile nohow! An’ John say: ‘I ain’t gonna git out!’ Den de white man, what’s been drinkin’, jump up on de runnin’-bo’ad an’ bust John in de mouth fer talkin’ back to him—he a white man, an’ Lowdins nothin’ but a nigger. ‘De very idee!’ he say, and hit John in de face six or seven times. Den John drawed his gun! One! two! t’ree! he fiah, hit dis old red-neck cracker in de shoulder, but he ain’t dead! Ain’t nothin’ meant to kill a cracker what’s drunk. But John think he done kilt this white man, an’ so he left him kickin’ in de street while he runs that car o’ his’n lickety-split out o’ town, goes to Vicksburg, an’ catches de river boat.... Well, sir! Dat night Crowville’s plumb full o’ white folks wid dogs an’ guns an’ lanterns, shoutin’ an’ yellin’ an’ scarin’ de wits out o’ us coloreds an’ wakin’ us up way late in de night-time lookin’ fer John, an’ dey don’t find him. . . . Den dey say dey gwine teach dem Crowville niggers a lesson, all of ’em, paintin’ dey houses an’ buyin’ cars an’ livin’ like white folks, so dey comes to our do’s an’ tells us to leave our houses—git de hell out in de fields, ’cause dey don’t want to kill nobody there dis evenin’! . . . Well, sir! Niggers in night-gowns an’ underwear an’ shimmies, half-naked an’ barefooted, was runnin’ ever’ which way in de dark, scratchin’ up dey legs in de briah patches, fallin’ on dey faces, scared to death! Po’ ole Pheeny, what ain’t moved from her bed wid de paralytics fo’ six years, dey made her daughters carry her out, screamin’ an’ wall-eyed, an’ set her in de middle o’ de cotton-patch. An’ Brian, what was sleepin’ naked, jumps up an’ grabs his wife’s apron and runs like a rabbit with not another blessed thing on!