and noses stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres. A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, “Begone _you_ Tige! you Spot! begone sah!” and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling, and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back, wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me.  There ain't no harm in a hound, nohow. And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do.  And here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little niggers was doing.  She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand--and says: “It's _you_, at last!--_ain't_ it?” I out with a “Yes'm” before I thought. She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, “You don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes, I don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you!  Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat you up!  Children, it's your cousin Tom!--tell him howdy.” But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her.  So she run on: “Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get your breakfast on the boat?” I said I had got it on the boat.  So then she started for the house, leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after.  When we got there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself dow