him:--

"Hi! Hit's Marse Dan, hit's Marse Dan come back agin!" he yelled, and at
the cry there flocked round him a little troop of faithful servants,
weeping, shouting, holding out eager arms.

"Hi! hit's Marse Dan!" they shrieked in chorus. "Hit's Marse Dan en Brer
Abel! Brer Abel en Marse Dan is done come agin!"

Dan wept with them--tears of weakness, of anguish, of faint hope amid the
dark. As their hands closed over his, he grasped them as if his eyes had
gone suddenly blind.

"Where are the others? Congo, for God's sake, tell me where are the
others?"

"We all's hyer, Marse Dan. We all's hyer," they protested, sobbing. "En Ole
Marster en Ole Miss dey's in de house er de overseer--dey's right over dar
behine de orchard whar you use ter projick wid de ploughs, en Brer Cupid
and Sis Rhody dey's a-gittin' dem dey supper."

"Then let me go," cried Dan. "Let me go!" and he started at a run past the
gray ruins and the standing kitchen, past the flower garden and the big
woodpile, to the orchard and the small frame house of Harris the overseer.

Big Abel kept at his heels, panting, grunting, calling upon his master to
halt and upon Congo to hurry after.

"You'll skeer dem ter deaf--you'll skeer Ole Miss ter deaf," cried Congo
from the rear, and drawing a trembling breath, Dan slackened his pace and
went on at a walk. At last, when he reached the small frame house and put
his foot upon the step, he hesitated so long that Congo slipped ahead of
him and softly opened the door. Then his young master followed and stood
looking with blurred eyes into the room.

Before a light blaze which burned on the hearth, the Major was sitting in
an arm chair of oak splits, his eyes on the blossoming apple trees outside,
and above his head, the radiant image of Aunt Emmeline, painted as Venus in
a gown of amber brocade. All else was plain and clean--the well-swept
floor, the burnished andirons, the cupboard filled with rows of blue and
white china--but that one glowing figure lent a festive air to the poorly
furnished room, and enriched with a certain pomp the tired old man, dozing,
with bowed white head, in the rude arm chair. It was the one thing saved
from the ashes--the one vestige of a former greatness that still remained.

As Dan stood there, a clock on the mantel struck the hour, and the Major
turned slowly toward him.

"Bring the lamps, Cupid," he said, though the daylight was still shining.
"I don't like the long shadows