to me:

"Mr. K----, Sam and young Junius are to be buried this evening; if you
have never seen a negro funeral, perhaps you'd like to attend."

"I will be happy to accompany you, Madam, if you go," I replied,

"Thank you," said the lady.

"Pshaw! Alice, you'll not go into the woods on so cold a night as this!"
said the Colonel.

"Yes, I think I ought to. Our people will expect me."

CHAPTER X.

THE NEGRO FUNERAL.

It was about an hour after nightfall when we took our way to the
burial-ground. The moon had risen, but the clouds which gathered when
the sun went down, covered its face, and were fast spreading their
thick, black shadows over the little collection of negro-houses. Near
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 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, revealing the
long, straight boxes of rough pine that held the remains of the two
negroes, and lighting up the score or two of russet mounds where 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 might better not have been, but "SAM, AGE 22;" "JAKE'S
ELIZA;" "AUNT SUE;" "AUNT LUCY'S TOM;" "JOE;" and other like
inscriptions, scratched in rough characters on the 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, taking a last look at the faces of