Unnamed Negro House Servant 1

Major de Spain's house servant in "Barn Burning" is "an old man with neat grizzled hair, in a linen jacket" (11). He tries to prevent Ab Snopes from entering the De Spain mansion, and then - unsuccessfully - orders Ab to "Wipe yo foots, white man, fo you come in here. Major ain't home nohow" (11). At the end of the story, when Sarty bursts into the mansion to warn Major de Spain, this house servant is the first person that he encounters. He re-appears in the version of Ab's behavior at De Spain's that Ratliff tells Varner in The Hamlet, and seems there to be the source of what Ratliff himself knows about the events.