inquire at the landings as fur as Vienny."

The colored woman now worked with all her strength to revive the
insensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his body till her elbows seemed
almost to be dropping off, and then rubbing his great, broad breast with
her head and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the breath
heaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to Sarah, and, wringing out
portions of her garments and hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, she
substituted them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing of
the man; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate heart, she sobbed:

"Lord, gi' me this man's life! O Lord, that took my chile, I will have
this life back!"

Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the moments, it seemed the
very hours, ran by and still he did not waken; and still, with all that
noble strength that makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under
the negro's unthanked toil, the widow and childless one fought on for
this cold lump of brother nature.

He warmed, he breathed, he groaned, he spoke!

His voice was like a happy sigh, as of one disturbed near the end of a
comforting morning nap in summer:

"You thar, Mary?"

He stared around with difficulty, his wounded face now clotted and
stained with blood, and his eyes next looked an inquiry so kind and
apprehensive that she answered it, to save him breath:

"Baby's drowned. God does best!"

He reached his hand to hers--she was almost naked to the waist, having
sacrificed all she had, the greatest of which was modesty, to bring back
that life in him which came naked and unashamed into the world--and he
put his little strength into the grasp.

"Mary," he exhaled, "why didn't you ketch the baby and leave me go?"

"Oh, dearly as I loved it," the woman answered, "I'm glad you come up
under my hands instead. You can do good: you're a white man. Baby would
have only been a poor slave, or a free negro nobody would care for."

"I mean to do good, if the Lord lets me," sighed the sailor; "I mean to
go and die agin for human natur at Johnson's Cross-roads."

CHAPTER XXIV.

OLD CHIMNEYS.

The day was far advanced when Jimmy Phoebus was strong enough to rise
and walk, and leave the refuge in the woods. He advised the colored
woman to crawl through the pine-trees along the margin, while he paddled
in the old scow in the shadow of the forest, which now lay strong upon
the river's breast.

At the distance