he
had gone whistling into the burning cabin, and coming out again had coolly
taken up the broken air; and to her this inherent recklessness was clothed
with the sublimity of her own ideals.

The cold wind had stiffened her limbs, and she ran back into the road and
walked on rapidly. Beyond the whitened foldings of the mountains a deep red
glow was burning in the west, and she wanted to hold out her hands to it
for warmth. Her next thought was that a winter sunset soon died out, and as
she turned quickly to go homeward, she saw that she was before Aunt
Ailsey's cabin, and that the little window was yellow from the light
within.

Aunt Ailsey had been dead for years, but the free negro Levi had moved into
her hut, and as Betty looked up she saw him standing beneath the blasted
oak, with a bundle of brushwood upon his shoulder. He was an honest-eyed,
grizzled-haired old negro, who wrung his meagre living from a blacksmith's
trade, bearing alike the scornful pity of his white neighbours and the
withering contempt of his black ones. For twenty years he had moved from
spot to spot along the turnpike, and he had lived in the dignity of
loneliness since the day upon which his master had won for himself the
freedom of Eternity, leaving to his servant Levi the labour of his own
hands.

As the girl spoke to him he answered timidly, fingering the edge of his
ragged coat.

Yes, he had managed to keep warm through the winter, and he had worn the
red flannel that she had given him.

"And your rheumatism?" asked Betty, kindly.

He replied that it had been growing worse of late, and with a sympathetic
word the girl was passing by when some newer pathos in his solitary figure
stayed her feet, and she called back quickly, "Uncle Levi, were you ever
married?"

"Dar, now," cried Uncle Levi, halting in the path while a gleam of the
wistful humour of his race leaped to his eyes. "Dar, now, is you ever hyern
de likes er dat? Mah'ed! Cose I'se mah'ed. I'se mah'ed quick'en Marse
Bolling. Ain't you never hyern tell er Sarindy?"

"Sarindy?" repeated the girl, questioningly.

"Lawd, Lawd, Sarindy wuz a moughty likely nigger," said Uncle Levi,
proudly; "she warn' nuttin' but a fiel' han', but she 'uz a moughty
likely nigger."

"And did she die?" asked Betty, in a whisper.

Uncle Levi rubbed his hands together, and shifted the brushwood upon his
shoulder.

"Who say Sarindy dead?" he demanded sternly, and added with a chuckle, "she
w