She rose reluctantly with a sigh, half of weariness, half of content. "Come. You and Annette get undressed and get to bed. I'll sing you to
sleep like I used to when you were little." "You look just like my daughter, sir,
    Who from me ran away...."

Her old cracked voice still had its hypnotic quality and I felt my
eyelids drooping despite my certain knowledge that this night, of all
nights, I should stay awake. "Maw," I mumbled. "I wanna drink." Her bare feet padded into the kitchen. I heard the rattle of tin cup
against galvanized bucket. Then she was back at my side again and the
spring-water was fresh on my dry lips and gums. "Maw," I rambled on. "I don't wanna sleep. Tell me about when you were
a little girl back in Virginia--and the big white horse and the black
people...."

"Not tonight, honey. You're all tuckered out," she crooned, stroking my
forehead and picking up the thread of that interminable song. "I a-am not your daughter, sir,
    And neither do I know. I a-am from Highlanzer
    And they call me Jack Monroe...."

I woke with a start, those last lugubrious lines still ringing in my
ears. "She dre-ew out her broadsword. She bid this world adieu. Saying 'Goodbye to Jack Highlanzer'
    And 'Goodbye to Jack Monroe.'" Have you ever awakened in a strange place--a hotel room perhaps--tried
to locate a familiar lamp, the dim outlines of your own bed-chamber,
the tick of a friendly clock? Or have you, perhaps, sought frantically
for a door with your hands sliding vainly along black and forbidding
walls? This was the same room in which I had gone to sleep. The fire was
almost out. By my side Annette breathed deep and slow. I could hear
Aunt Ellen snoring not far away. Through the open door a full moon
stretched its carpet almost to my bed. Yet, despite these comforting
sights and sounds, everything about me seemed topsy turvy and utterly
horribly wrong. My bare toes curled with terror as I realized what it was. Our front
door was in the south wall of the cabin. The moonshine was pouring in
through a wide opening in the north wall--through the place where the
mirror stood! And a cold wind was pouring in with it. "Maw," I whispered, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. Only the chorus of katydids answered. But this was spring! Katydids sang only in the fall! At the same moment I saw a bare foot and ankle etched in moonlight as
it hooked around the age-darkened frame of the opening. "Please, Maw." I still struggled between dream and waking. "You'll
catch cold out there." She came partially inside the "door" then and smiled at me. And I
noticed, with the lack of surprise which accompanies nightmares, that
her teeth were white and firm in the moonglow. "Shhh!" she admonished. "I think I hear a wagon." "But Paw is...." I began, then stopped spellbound. Far in the distance, across rolling hills which lay bathed in beauty
and above the fresh staccato mutter of katydids, I too caught the creak
of wheels on a gravel road, the jingle of trace chains and the rumble
of a half-empty jolt-wagon bed. I crouched, hardly breathing, until I heard the wagon stop briefly at
our sagging gate--we always kept it closed now--heard the rusty hinges
squeak and then the friendly thump, thumptey, thump of the wagon as it
resumed its progress into the yard. "It's Uncle Bill, ain't it, Maw?" I pleaded. "Bill's not due till tomorrow, honey," she answered softly as she
shaded her eyes against the moonlight. "No, it's...."

"But it can't be," I sobbed. "He--the angels took him." "Not Josiah! Angels wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, thank the
dear just God," she chuckled. "He'll have a whole raft of packages
after all this while." She started forward briskly. "I'll go help pack
them in." "No, Maw! Don't leave--wait for me!" I screamed, plunging from bed and
racing wildly after her receding back. I regained consciousness to find Aunt Ellen bathing my forehead with
hot vinegar. Annette was sobbing. My face was badly cut--I still wear
the scar--and the mirror was shattered in its frame. "Maw!" I struggled to get up. "She...."

"I know," said Aunt Ellen in just the thread of a voice unused for
years as her plump white hands continued to apply the compress. "I
understand." When Uncle Bill arrived next morning there was a great to-do and the
neighbors organized a search of the surrounding woods and the creek
bottom. Of course they found nothing. I knew they wouldn't. Annette and
Aunt Ellen knew they wouldn't. And I think Uncle Bill knew it too after
he heard my story, although of course he wouldn't let on. The rest of them patted my head and said, "Too bad, poor boy. He's
under an awful strain," when I tried to tell them. Several months later a woman's body was found in White River, full
fifteen miles away. People said it must be grandmother, that she must
have wandered that far before she died of exposure. Our aunts, uncles,
cousins and nephews had a big funeral at the New Harmony Church over
the hill.