l sobs shook her frame and brought Eloise to her.

"Don't cry so," she said. "You frighten me."

Amy put her aside, and answered, "I must cry; it cools my brain. There
are oceans yet to come,--all the pent-up tears of the years--since he
told me you were dead. I am so glad to cry."

For some moments she wept on, until Jakey began to soothe her with his
"Doan' cry no mo', honey. Summat has done happened you bad, but it's
done gone now, an' we're all here,--me an' I do' know her name, but
she's you uns, an' Mas'r Mason an' de oder gemman. We're all here, an'
de light is breakin'. Doan' you feel it, honey?"

"Yes, I feel it," she said, lifting up her head and wiping away her
tears. "The light is breaking; my head is better. This is the old home.
How did we get here?"

Her mind was misty still, but Eloise felt a crisis was past, and that in
time the films which had clouded her mother's brain would clear away,
not wholly, perhaps, for she was a Harris, and "all the Harrises," Jake
said, "were quar." She was very quiet now, and listened as they talked,
but could recall nothing of her mother or the funeral, which Mr. Mason
had attended. She seemed very tired, and at Eloise's suggestion lay
clown upon the lounge and soon fell asleep, while Jack put question
after question to Jake, hoping some light would be thrown upon the
mystery they had come to unravel.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LITTLE HAIR TRUNK

Jake could tell them but little more than he had told Mr. Mason on a
former visit. This he repeated with some additions, while Eloise
listened, sometimes with indignation at Col. Crompton, and sometimes
with shame and a thought as to what Jack would think of it. Her mother's
family history was being unrolled before her, and she did not like it.
There was proud blood in her veins, and she felt it coming to the
surface and rebelling against the family tree of which she was a
branch,--the Harrises, the Crackers, and, more than all, the uncertainty
as to her mother's legitimacy, which she began to fear must remain an
uncertainty. It was not a very desirable ancestry, and she glanced
timidly at Jack to see how he was taking it. His face was very placid
and unmoved as he questioned Jake of the relatives in Georgia, whom
Amy's mother had visited.

"We must find them," he said. "Do you know anything of them? Were they
Harrises, or what?"

Jake said they were "Browns an' Crackers; not the real no 'counts.
Thar's a difference,