THE TOWN. 75

 again into the dark. The moving spot of gold
 touches perhaps a hammer, dropping from its
 broken handle, a ring in the wall where a horse
 has been fastened, or a blacksmith's apron
,hanging high upon the. chimney breast. That
plummet-line of Noon gives the darkened room
mysterious possibilities; it sounds the Past. It
is easy to remember, or at least to imagine,
in this silence, clamorous with dead sounds.
One hears the hoarse wheeze of the bellows,
or the champ of bits and pounding hoofs, and
the blow of a brawny hand upon a steaming
flank.

 "Dey do say," -there is a hut beside the
forge, and in the open doorway a wrinkled, griz-
zled negro is sitting in a broken chair, with a
corn-cob pipe between his lips (it is he who plays
the host with neighborly kindness for the absent
owner), dey do say dat dey all comes back
ag'in; do' I ain't seen 'em, dat's a fac'. But an
ol' lady, an ol' cullud lady, dat lib in dere all by
herself, she say she seen 'em many and many a
time. Say she seen de horses prancin', and