url, you have
ever been faithful to me. Have I been as kind to you?"

A big sob was the only answer, but it came from the depths of the heart,
and said "Yes" a hundred times.

"Then, be faithful still. You have a brave heart and a strong arm, and
to your support and protection must I, in some sort, leave my poor wife
and child. Then give me your word, your solemn promise, that you will be
as faithful to Miss Jemima as you have been to me; and that you will
take good care of her fatherless boy, till he be old and strong enough
to shift for himself and for his mother, too. Do you give me your
promise?"

"O master!" Burl at length sobbed out, "it ain't much a pore nigger kin
do fur White folks in dat way; but what I kin do I will do, an' won't
never stop a doin' it." Here, with a blubbering expression of grief, the
poor fellow broke down.

"Your hand upon it, my good old boy," whispered the dying hunter, his
breath now almost gone. "Bid Miss Jemima and dear little Bushie good-by
for me, and carry them my dying blessing."

In pledge of the promise, never to be broken, Burl took the hand that
was now powerless to take his, and held it till death had fixed its
answering grasp and the hunter was gone to find another paradise. Then
he laid his master's body upon the streamlet's brink, to wash away the
blood. How gently the huge hand laved the gory locks and dashed the soft
water into the dead, pale face! It was a stern, rugged, weather-beaten
face; but the light of the last loving thoughts still lingered upon it,
lending it a beauty in death which it had never known in life. This part
of his pious duty duly done, then tenderly in his mighty arms he took up
the precious burden and laid it across his shoulder to bear it to the
distant home. Through the fast lengthening shadows of sunset, through
the glimmering shades of twilight, through the melancholy starlight,
through woods, woods, woods, he bore it, till the lamp that always
burned at the little square window, when the hunter was abroad in the
night, was spied from afar, telling that the faithful, loving heart was
waiting and watching as she should never wait and watch again.

Burl stepped softly over the low rail-fence into the yard and laid his
master's body upon a puncheon bench which stood under a forest-tree
directly in front of the cabin. Having composed the limbs of the dead,
he stole with noiseless tread across the porch to the cabin door, at
which he softly kn