When Nina had finished her reading, she found her own heart touched by the effect which she had produced. The nursing, child-loving Old Tiff was ready, in a moment, to bow before his Redeemer, enshrined in the form of an infant; and it seemed as if the air around him had been made sacred by the sweetness of the story.
As Nina was mounting her horse to return, Tiff brought out a little basket full of wild raspberries.
"Tiff wants to give you something," he said.
"Thank you, Uncle Tiff. How delightful! Now, if you'll only give me a cluster of your Michigan rose!"
Proud and happy was Tiff, and, pulling down the very topmost cluster of his rose, he presented it to her. Alas! before Nina reached home, it hung drooping from the heat.
"The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand forever."
CHAPTER XXXI. THE WARNING.
In life organized as it is at the South, there are two currents:—one, the current of the master's fortunes, feelings, and hopes; the other, that of the slave's. It is a melancholy fact in the history of the human race, as yet, that there have been multitudes who follow the triumphal march of life only as captives, to whom the voice of the trumpet, the waving of the banners, the shouts of the people, only add to the bitterness of enthralment.