Mrs. Westmore laughed her metallic little laugh. It was habit. She
intended it to be reassuring, but too much of it made one nervous. It
was the laugh without the soul in it--the eye open and lighted, but
dead. It was a Damascus blade falling from the stricken arm to the
stone pavement and not against the ringing steel of an opponent.

"You will guess, of course, where she is," she said after they were
seated.

"No?" from Travis.

"Getting their Sunday School lesson--she, Uncle Bisco, and the
Bishop."

Travis frowned and gave a nervous twitch of his shoulders as he
turned around to find himself a chair.

"No one knows just how we feel towards Uncle Bisco and his wife,"
went on Mrs. Westmore in half apology--"she has been with us so long
and is now so old and helpless since they were freed; their children
have all left them--gone--no one knows where. And so Uncle Bisco and
Aunt Charity are as helpless as babes, and but for Alice they would
suffer greatly."

A sudden impulse seized Travis: "Let us go and peep in on them. We
shall have a good joke on Her Majesty."

Mrs. Westmore laughed, and they slipped quietly out to Uncle Bisco's
cabin. Down a shrubbery-lined walk they went--then through the woods
across a field. It was a long walk, but the path was firm and good,
and the moon lit it up. They came to the little cabin at last, in the
edge of another wood. Then they slipped around and peeped in the
window.

A small kerosene lamp sat on a table lighting up a room scrupulously
clean.

Uncle Bisco was very old. His head was, in truth, a cotton plant full
open. His face was intelligent, grave--such a face as Howard Weeden
only could draw from memory. He had finished his supper, and from the
remnants left on the plate it was plain that Alice Westmore had
prepared for the old man dainties which she, herself, could not
afford to indulge in.

By him sat his old wife, and on the other side of the fireplace was
the old overseer, his head also white, his face strong and
thoughtful. He was clean shaven, save a patch of short white
chin-whiskers, and his big straight nose had a slight hook of
shrewdness in it.

Alice Westmore was reading the chapter--her voice added to it an
hundred fold: "Let not your heart be troubled.... Ye believe in God,
believe also in me.... In my Father's house are many mansions...!"

The lamplight fell on her hair. It was brown where the light flashed
over it, and lay in rippling waves aroun