When harvest time came, they worked in the fields side by
side,--plucked the corn, pulled the fodder, and gathered the dried peas
from the yellow pea-vines. Cicely was a phenomenal cotton-picker, and
John accompanied her to the fields and stayed by her hours at a time,
though occasionally he would complain of his head, and sit under a tree
and rest part of the day while Cicely worked, the two keeping one
another always in sight.

They did not have a great deal of intercourse with other people. Young
men came to the cabin sometimes to see Cicely, but when they found her
entirely absorbed in the stranger they ceased their visits. For a time
Cicely kept him away, as much as possible, from others, because she did
not wish them to see that there was anything wrong about him. This was
her motive at first, but after a while she kept him to herself simply
because she was happier so. He was hers--hers alone. She had found him,
as Pharaoh's daughter had found Moses in the bulrushes; she had taught
him to speak, to think, to love. She had not taught him to remember; she
would not have wished him to; she would have been jealous of any past to
which he might have proved bound by other ties. Her dream so far had
come true. She had found him; he loved her. The rest of it would as
surely follow, and that before long. For dreams were serious things, and
time had proved hers to have been not a presage of misfortune, but one
of the beneficent visions that are sent, that we may enjoy by
anticipation the good things that are in store for us.

III

But a short interval of time elapsed after the passage of the warlike
host that swept through North Carolina, until there appeared upon the
scene the vanguard of a second army, which came to bring light and the
fruits of liberty to a land which slavery and the havoc of war had
brought to ruin. It is fashionable to assume that those who undertook
the political rehabilitation of the Southern States merely rounded out
the ruin that the war had wrought--merely ploughed up the desolate land
and sowed it with salt. Perhaps the gentler judgments of the future may
recognize that their task was a difficult one, and that wiser and
honester men might have failed as egregiously. It may even, in time, be
conceded that some good came out of the carpet-bag governments, as, for
instance, the establishment of a system of popular education in the
former slave States. Where it had been a crime to teach peopl