She was thinking how she could best win the favor and protection of Heaven for her husband. She would teach the negroes for Carter's sake; she had not yet learned to do it for Jesus Christ's sake. She was not a heathen; she had received the same evangelical instruction that most young Americans receive; she was perfectly well aware of the doctrine of salvation by faith and not by works. But no profound sorrow, no awful sense of helplessness under the threatening of dangers to those whom she dearly loved, had ever made these things matters of personal experience and realizing belief.
When the Doctor called in the negroes at nine o'clock, and read to them a chapter from the Bible, and a prayer, Lillie joined in the devotions with an unusual sense of humility and earnestness. In her own room, before going to bed, she prayed again for Carter, and not for him only, but for herself. Then she quickly fell asleep, for she was young and very tired. How some elderly people, who have learned to toss and count the hours till near morning, envy these infants, whether of twenty months or twenty years, who can so readily cast their sorrows into the profound and tranquil ocean of slumber!
CHAPTER XIX. THE REORGANIZATION OF SOUTHERN LABOR IS CONTINUED WITH VIGOR.
By six o'clock in the morning the Doctor was out visiting the quarters of his sable dependants. Having on the previous evening told Major Scott, the head man or overseer of the gang, that he should expect the people to rise by daybreak and get their breakfasts immediately, so as to be ready for early work, he was a little astonished to find half of them still asleep, and two or three absent. The Major himself was just leaving the water-butt in rear of the plantation house, where he had evidently been performing his morning ablutions.
"Scott," said the Doctor, "you shouldn't use that water. The butt holds hardly enough for the family."
"Yes sah," answered with a reverential bow the Major. "But the butt that we has is mighty dry."
"But there is the bayou, close by."
"Yes sah, so 'tis," assented the Major, with another bow. "I guess I'll think of that nex' time."
"But what are you all about?" asked the Doctor. "I understood that you were all to be up and ready for work by this time."