midday
Dissimulation and secretiveness , seeded in savagery , nourished in oppression , ingrained in the soul for generations , are part of a nature as opaque to the average Caucasian eye as is the sable skin of Africa itself . They scattered , but a keen eye followed them . Eddring saw that they began to come together again at different points , group joining group , and all bending their steps toward the edge of the surrounding forest . Had the owner of the Big House , or any planter thereabout , seen this gathering at the midday hour , when the people should have been at their work , he would assuredly have stopped them and made sharp questioning . But at the moment the storekeeper was at home asleep in his noonday nap ; the owner of the Big House had problems of his own , and , as it chanced , none of the neighboring planters was at the railroad station . John Eddring , now fully alert , looked sharply about him , then slipped down from the railway platform . He crossed a little field by a faint path , and hurried off to the shadow of the woods , his course paralleling the forest road as nearly as might be .