two new-made graves were gathered some two hundred men and women, as
dark as the night that was setting around them. As we entered the circle
the old preacher pointed to the seats reserved for us, and the sable
crowd fell back a few paces, as if, even in the presence of death, they
did not forget the difference between their race and ours.

Scattered here and there among the trees, torches of lightwood threw a
wild and fitful light over the little cluster of graves, and revealed
the long, straight boxes of rough pine that held the remains of the two
negroes, and lit up the score of russet mounds beneath which slept the
dusky kinsmen who had gone before them.

The simple head-boards that marked these humble graves chronicled no
bad biography or senseless rhyme, and told no false tales of lives that
had better not have been, but 'SAM, AGE 22;' 'POMPEY;' 'JAKE'S ELIZA;;
'AUNT SUE;' 'AUNT LUCY'S TOM;' 'JOE;' and other like inscriptions,
scratched in rough characters on those unplaned boards, were all the
records there. The rude tenants had passed away and 'left no sign;'
their birth, their age, their deeds, were alike unknown--unknown, but
not forgotten; for are they not written in the book of His
remembrance--and when He counteth up his jewels, may not some of them be
there?

The queer, grotesque dress, and sad, earnest looks of the black group;
the red, fitful glare of the blazing pine, and the white faces of the
tapped trees, gleaming through the gloom like so many sheeted-ghosts
gathered to some death-carnival, made up a strange, wild scene--the
strangest and the wildest I had ever witnessed.

The covers of the rude coffins were not yet nailed down, and when we
arrived, the blacks were one by one passing before them, taking a last
look at the faces of the dead. Soon, Junius, holding his weeping wife by
the hand, approached the smaller of the two boxes, which held all that
was left of their first-born. The mother kneeling by its side, kissed
again and again the cold, shrunken lips, and sobbed as if her heart
would break; while the strong frame of the father shook convulsively,
as, choking down the great sorrow which welled up in his throat, he
turned away from his boy forever. As he did so, old Pompey said:

'Don't grebe, June, he'm whar de wicked cease from trubbling, whar de
weary am at rest.'

'I knows it; I knows it, Uncle. I knows de Lord am bery good to take 'im
'way; but why did he take de young chile, and