About ten minutes later, her little Jesse pulled on her skirt and she picked him up. “I am so hungry,” he said, “I would even eat False Face Pudding.”

Jesse would not eat False Face Pudding, cornmeal cooked with maple sugar and sunflower oil, which was prepared for False Face dances. Her other children were fascinated by the False Faces themselves, giggled when the dancers performed, and tried to make little masks from birch bark to use in their games; but Jesse was terrified by the False Faces, by their cavortings, their healings and other ministrations. And he shunned a pudding that he otherwise would have liked very much, for he loved the sugar of maples.

THROUGH the drizzle, light, and then the shape of the cabin that contained it. And the choice was to knock and hope that someone would take them in for the night.

The woman who opened the door had very dark brown skin, and Mary’s children, their clothes sodden and their hair flat from rain, looked at her solemnly. Then the door was wider and the woman’s name was Cleopha and she and her younger brother, Simon, served them a soup made from dried white beans.

Later that night Mary learned that Cleopha, Simon, and their brother, James, had been slaves in Virginia, that they had departed their master’s house one night, that dogs had been loosed, that James had fallen behind, that they had had to leave him. There had been no food, no rest for many days. And Simon had not spoken a word since.

In the morning Cleopha had a plan to offer. “We have a large field of corn we have not harvested. You could stay with us and help us—”

She stopped, for Mary looked doubtfully at her.

“For pay,” she added.

“For pay?”

“Yes. We will pay you. In corn. For you and your family.”

Before long I grew to love my employers with all my heart, and I believe that they were fond of me and of Thomas, Jane, Polly, John, Betsey, and Jesse. The cabin was crowded, but no one seemed to mind. I knew I could feed my children, and hence I stepped with a light foot into the corn hillocks each morning.

My dear young ones showed Simon and Cleopha our people’s way of picking corn—the plucking of the ears and throwing of them over the left shoulder into great harvesting baskets which they carried on their backs. Cleopha stood with one hand on her hip and frowned at this and finally smiled and in the end laughed at what seemed to her a peculiar method, but Simon from the start was all merriment, joined right in, and laughed a laugh which must be called hearty even though it was entirely silent.

I noticed that Simon carried a gun with him to our labors in the corn, and I asked Cleopha why he did this, to which she replied that she had never seen him do it before our days together with them. “Perhaps,” she said, smiling, “my brother thinks that though I was never worth protecting, you and your children are.”