Her mother had been a slave. But slavery had passed into history years before Linda was born. Then her parents were free, often hungry, but free. They had been miserably poor, living in a small cabin on the border of a whispering swamp, a swamp of endless mystery which Linda never tired of exploring. How she loved the smell of the water-drenched trees, sycamore and cypress, the green velvet moss, occasionally a bit of Spanish bayonet, the countless gorgeous butterflies that flittered about in the winding mazes of verdure like winged flowers. Here were mystery and romance, awe-inspiring beauty and always that eternal whispering like the murmur of fairy voices. That the whispering was caused by the lapping of the water in the brooks, the springs and sluggish streams never occurred to Linda. To her they were the voices of goblins, ghouls, ghosts and witches.
By moonlight the swamp was at its most absorbing peak of sorcery. Then all that was earthly moved out and spooks and other
wraiths of necromancy glided in to take its
