t, or I b'lieve she'd sprung overboard. He'd a good
time gettin' her home, I reckon. She was the very old Harry when her
dander was up,' and the old negro laughed as he thought of what the
Colonel must have borne on that journey with his troublesome charge.

"There came a few lines to him, he said, telling of Col. Crompton's safe
arrival home, and that the child was well. After a while the war broke
out, and communication with the North was cut off. The friend in
Palatka, who had returned from Europe and joined the Confederate Army,
was killed, and the letter which Jake sent to Col. Crompton when peace
was restored was not answered for a long time. At last the Colonel wrote
that Eudora had married against his wishes and gone to Europe, and Jake
was not to trouble him with any more letters concerning her.

"An' that's all I knows of her,' he said, 'whether she's dead or alive,
or whar she is; but if I did know I b'lieve I'd walk afoot to de Norf to
see her. She ain't my lil chile Dory no mo', but I allus thinks of her
like dat, an' I keeps de cradle she was rocked in by my bed, an'
sometimes, when I'se lonesome nights, an' can't sleep for thinkin' of
her, I puts my han' out an' jogs it with a feelin' the lil one is thar,
an' every day I prays she may come back to me, an' I b'lieve she will.
Yes, sar, it comes to me that she will.'

"The tears were running down the old man's face when, on our going to
the house, he showed me the cradle close to his bed, a rude,
old-fashioned, high-topped thing, such as the poorest families used
years ago. There was a pillow, or cushion, in it, and a little patchwork
quilt, which, he said, Mandy Ann pieced and made. He showed me, too, a
second or third school reader, soiled and worn and pencil marked, and
showing that it had been much used.

"'This was Miss Dory's,' he said; 'the one she studied de most, tryin'
to learn, an' gettin' terribly flustered wid de big words. I can see her
now, bendin' over it airly an' late; sometimes wid de chile in her lap
till she done tuckered out, an' laid it away with a sithe as if glad to
be shet of it. She couldn't larn, an' de Lord took her whar dey don't
ask what you knows,--only dis: does you lub de Lord? an' she did, de
lamb.'

"Jake was still crying, and I was not far from it as I saw in fancy that
poor young girl trying to learn, trying to master the big words and
their meaning, in the vain hope of fitting herself for companionship
with a man