ut she lost heart at last. She was deserted.
There was no need for her to try to be a lady. Her life was slipping
away, but for baby there was hope, and many times in her chamber loft,
when Mandy Ann thought she was taking her _sester_, and so far imitating
"de quality," she was praying that when she was dead, as she felt she
soon would be, her little child might be recognized and taken where she
rightfully belonged.

And so the years went on till more than three were gone since the
stranger came on the "Hatty," and one morning when she lay again at the
wharf, and Mandy Ann came down for something ordered from Palatka, her
eyes were swollen with crying, and when Ted began his chaff she
answered, "Doan't, Teddy, doan't. I can't fought you now, nor sass you
back, 'case Miss Dory is dead, an' Jake's done gone for de minister."

CHAPTER V

MISS DORY

That day was one of the hottest of the season, and the sun was beating
down upon the piazza of the Brock House where the Rev. Charles Mason sat
fanning himself with a huge palm leaf, and trying to put together in his
mind some points for the sermon he was to preach the next Sunday in the
parlor of the hotel to the few guests who came there occasionally during
the summer. But it was of no use. With the thermometer at ninety degrees
in the shade, and not a breath of air moving, except that made by his
fan, points did not come readily, and all he could think of was Dives'
thirsting for a drop of water from the finger of Lazarus to cool his
parched tongue. "If it was hotter there than it is here I am sorry for
him," he thought, wiping his wet face and looking off across the broad
lake in the direction of Sanford, from which a rowboat was coming very
rapidly, the oarsman bending to his work with a will, which soon brought
him to the landing place, near the hotel. Securing his boat, he came up
the walk and approaching Mr. Mason accosted him with, "How d'ye, Mas'r
Mason. I knows you by sight, and I'se right glad to find you hyar. You
see, I'se that tuckered out I'm fit to drap."

The perspiration was standing in great drops on his face as he sank
panting upon a step of the piazza.

"'Scuse me," he said, "but 'pears like I can't stan' another minit, what
with bein' up all night with Miss Dory, an' gwine 'crost the lake twiste
for nothin', 'case I didn't find him."

By this time Mr. Mason had recognized the negro as one he had seen
occasionally around the hotel selling v