d excitement, and was ready
soon after breakfast for the drive to the palmetto clearing, and Amy
seemed almost as excited and eager. Born amid palms and orange trees,
and magnolias and negroes, the sight of them brought back the past in a
misty kind of way, which was constantly clearing as Eloise helped her to
remember. Of Mr. Mason she of course had no recollection, and shrank
from him when presented to him. He did not tell her he had buried her
mother. He only said he knew Jakey, and was going to take her to him,
and they were soon on their way. The road was very different from the
one over which he had been driven behind the white mule, and there were
marks of improvement everywhere,--gardens and fields and cabins with
little negroes swarming around the doors, and these, with the palm trees
and the orange trees, helped to revive Amy's memories of the time when
she played with the little darkys among the dwarf palmettos and ate
oranges in the groves.

In the doorway of one of the small houses a colored woman was standing,
looking at the carriage as it passed. Recognizing Mr. Mason, she gave
him a hearty "How d'ye, Mas'r Mason?" to which he responded without
telling his companions that it was Mandy Ann. He wished Amy to see Jake
first.

"Here we are," he said at last. "This is the clearing; this is the
house, and there is Jake himself."

He pointed to a negro in the distance, and to a small house,--half log
and half frame, for Jake had added to and improved it within a few
years.

"I'se gwine to make it 'spectable, so she won't be 'shamed if she ever
comes back to see whar she was bawn," he had thought, and to him it
seemed almost palatial, with its addition, which he called a "linter,"
and which consisted of a large room furnished with a most heterogeneous
mass of articles gathered here and there as he could afford them.

Conspicuous in one corner was "lil Dory's cradle," which had been
painted red, with a lettering in white on one side of it, "In memory of
lil chile Dory." This he had placed in what he called the parlor that
morning, after dusting it carefully and putting a fresh pillow case on
the scanty pillow where Amy's head had lain. He was thinking of her and
wondering he did not hear from the Colonel, when the sound of carriage
wheels made him look up and start for his house. Mr. Mason was the first
to alight; then Jack; then Eloise; and then Amy, whose senses for a
moment left her entirely.

"What is