ory never tole a lie. She said to find Elder
Covil, who knew, but he's done gone off Norf, or somewhar.'

"I felt sure it was all right when I saw the girl's face. It must have
been beautiful in life, and no taint of guilt had ever marred its
innocence. There could have been no fault at her door, except
concealment, and the reason for that was buried in her grave. I heard of
a stranger who visited the clearing three or four years before the
funeral. Jake was away, but Mandy Ann was there and full of the
'gemman,' who, I have no doubt, was the girl's husband and a great
scamp. I left Florida within a week after that funeral, and have never
been here since, until I came to take charge for a time of the church
which has been erected here. I should never have known the place, it has
changed so since the close of the war and the influx of visitors from
the North. The hotel, which has been greatly improved and enlarged, is
always full in the season, and it is one of the most popular winter
resorts on the river.

"One of my first inquiries was for the negroes Jake and Mandy Ann. The
latter is married and lives near the hotel, with as many children, I
thought, as the old woman who lived in a shoe, the way they swarmed out
when I called to see their mother. She had gone to Jacksonville to see
'ole Miss Perkinses, who was dyin', and had sent for her 'case she done
live with her when she was a girl,' one of the pickaninnies said. When I
asked for Jake I was told he was still in the palmetto clearing. No one
could tell me anything about the little girl who must now, if living, be
a woman of nearly forty. Indeed, no one seemed to remember her, so
changed are the people since the war. Jake, I was sure, had not
forgotten, and a few days ago I went to see him. He is an old man now,
and if there is such a thing as an aristocratic negro, he is one; with
his face black as ebony, his hair white as snow, and his eyes full of
intelligence and fire, especially when he talks of Miss Dory and 'de
good ole times fo' she went to Georgy and met de Northern cuss.' That is
what he calls the man who came for the little girl after the old
grandmother died.

"I will tell you the story of his coming as Jake told it to me in the
little enclosure where Miss Dory is buried, and where there is a very
pretty monument to her memory, with 'Eudora, aged 20,' upon it. He was
working in the yard, which was a garden of bloom, and over the grave and
around the m