of Florida, the favorite of her easy-living,
easy-loving Greek father, the sole relic of some pretty slave! As she
walked silently along the halls of the Terrace, he tried to realize
Nelse's description of her gayety, once, in the halls of Loringwood.
And when he observed the adoring eyes with which she regarded the
Marquise after the pickaninny episode, he understood it was another
child she was thinking of--a child who should have been freed, and was
not, and the feelings of Pluto were as her own.

Two entire days passed without Pluto's return. There was some delay,
owing to the absence of the overseer from the Larue estate; then,
Zekal was ailing, and that delayed him until sundown of the second
day, when he took the child in his arms--his own child now--and with
its scanty wardrobe, and a few sundry articles of Rose's, all saved
religiously by an old "aunty," who had nursed her--he started homeward
on his long night tramp, so happy he scarce felt the weight of the boy
in his arms, or that of the bundle fastened with a rope across his
shoulders. He had his boy, and the boy was free! and when he thought
of the stranger who had wrought this miracle his heart swelled with
gratitude and the tears blinded him as he tramped homeward through the
darkness.

The first faint color of dawn was showing in the east when he walked
into Dilsey's cook-house and showed the child asleep in his arms.

What a commotion! as the other house servants mustered in, sleepily,
and straightway were startled very wide awake indeed, and each
insisted on feeling the weight of the newcomer, just, Dilsey said, as
if there never was a child seen on that plantation before. And all had
cures for the "brashy" spell the little chap had been afflicted by,
and which seemed frightened away entirely, as he looked about him with
eyes like black beads. All the new faces, and the petting, were a
revelation to Zekal.

Dilsey put up with it till everything else seemed at a standstill in
the morning's work, when she scattered the young folks right and left
to their several duties, got Pluto an excellent breakfast, and gave
the child in charge of one of the mothers in the quarters till
"mist'ess" settled about him.

"Yo' better take his little duds, too, Lucy," suggested Pluto, as the
boy was toddling away with her, contentedly, rich in the possession
of two little fists full of sweet things; "they're tied up in that
bandana--not the blue one! That blue one g