d supposed the patrol of the mysterious mounted police of the
South--the men who rode at night--were to the slave always a tragic
terror.

It seemed a thing for joke and ribald song.

After lunch, the negroes entered on the afternoon's fun or work. The
industrious ones plied their trades to earn money for luxuries. The boys
who loved to fish and hunt rabbits hurried to the river and the fields.
There was always a hound at their service for a rabbit hunt on Saturday
afternoons. Some were pitching horse shoes. Two groups began to play
marbles.

The marketing done for the house, the mistress of Arlington, with
medicine case in hand, started on her round of healing for body and
mind. Mary offered to go with her but the mother saw Stuart hovering
about and quietly answered:

"No. You can comfort poor Jeb. He looks disconsolate."

Into every cottage she moved, a quiet, ministering angel. Every hope and
fear of ailing young or old found in her an ear to hear, a heart to pity
and an arm to save.

If she found a case of serious illness, a doctor was called and a nurse
set to watch by the bedside. Every delicacy and luxury the big house
held was at the command of the sufferer and that without stint.

In all these clean flower-set cottages there was not a single crippled
servant maimed in the service of his master. No black man or woman was
allowed to do dangerous work. All dangerous tasks were done by hired
white laborers. They were hired by the day under contract through their
boss. Even ditches on the farm if they ran through swamp lands infested
by malaria, were dug by white hired labor. The master would not permit
his slave to take such risks.

But the most important ministry of the mistress of Arlington was in the
medicine for the soul which she brought to the life and character of
each servant for whose training she had accepted responsibility.

To her even the master proudly and loyally yielded authority. Her sway
over the servants was absolute in its spiritual power. Into their souls
in hours of trial she poured the healing and inspiration of a beautiful
spirit. The mistress of Arlington was delicate and frail in body. But
out of her physical suffering the spirit rose to greater heights with
each day's duty and service.

This mysterious power caught the warm imagination of the negroes. They
were "servants" to others. They were her _slaves_ and they rejoiced
in the bond that bound them. They knew that her body