aos there floated a calm, which gradually took the form of
recollections which now caused her heart to beat loudly with the
uncertainty, fraught with reality. _That night!_ came fresh again to her
memory, when she had overheard her brother's words,--"she is not my
sister by birth!" The same holy passions filled her soul, and she gazed
upon that face, the semblance of which, she had many a time, ere now,
looked upon in dreams! might they not have been waking dreams?

"God grant dat such as she, neber know what it am to be torn from her
childer!" groaned the black woman, with a deep-drawn sigh.

"Ah, my poor woman," said Natalie, her eyes still fixed upon that
spiritual face, "I trust such has never been your lot."

"Bress you! missy, dem is de only kind words I hear dis many a day,
since dey take me way from my poor ole man, and de young uns! but I's
not sure now but you's de spirit ob dat pure cretur, (pointing to the
Madonna) dat's speakin a few words, jus to cheer me like."

"And where are your children now? and your poor old man?"

"O! missy," said the woman, drawing a parcel from her bosom, carefully
unfolding it, and holding a large red handkerchief up to view,--"if I
tinks I eber find de mate to dat, I'specks I die wid de joy! but it am a
long story, missy, it begins way back, a long fore your sweet eyes see
de light ob dis wicked world."

"Do not call it a wicked world; it is a beautiful world, which God has
given us to live in!"

"Ah, missy, if oder white folks like you, I 'specks it be jus no world
at all; it be all one great heaben!"

"But what is this mark upon the handkerchief?" asked Natalie, for she
had seen a fac-simile of the little device, upon old Vingo's bandanna,
which he used to lend her when she was a child, and she had handled it
so carefully, because he had told her that it was the most valuable
thing he owned in the world, beside his Bible, and she had looked up
into his face, with her great blue eyes, and asked him what the two
little crooked marks were made to represent; and he had told her they
were to represent himself and his poor Phillis, for they were bent with
the sorrows of the world; and now, here were the same crooked marks,
wrought upon the corner of this black woman's handkerchief, which she
seemed to treasure so much! What could it mean? Natalie looked upon it
in astonishment.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

"My poor ole man gabe it to me, de last time I sees him,