“My fader and moder,” he explained very simply to the bystanders. He put the old couple in the most comfortable pew, and sat down by them. They both seemed half dead. The woman lay nearly lifeless. Mou-Setsé took her limp and withered hand and began to rub it softly.
“How do you know them?” asked some interested bystanders who knew Mou-Setsé’s story.
“De ole woman hab de smile,” he said; “I neber forgot my moder’s smile. She looked at me on de quay, and she smiled, and my heart leaped, and I said, ‘Tank de Lord, glory be to God.’ I tole ye de Lord would help me.”
Just then the man stretched himself, opened his eyes, fixed them on Mou-Setsé, and began to mutter.
Mou-Setsé bent his head to listen.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet. “Oh praise the Lord!” he exclaimed again. “I said as de Lord would help me. Listen to de ole man, he is talking in de tongue of the Akus, in the country of Yarriba. He was de brave warrior, my fader was.”
Yes, Mou-Setsé was right. The fruit of long patience was at last yielding to him its precious store, and the old warrior of the beautiful African valley had come back through nobody knew what hardships, with his aged wife, to be nursed, cherished, and cared for by a long-lost son.
As soon as they were sufficiently revived Mou-Setsé took them to the comfortable home he had been so long getting ready for them. Here they told him of their slavery, of the terrors they had undergone, of the bitterness of knowing nothing of his fate, of the lonely days when they had belonged to different masters; then of their release from slavery, and how, as free man and woman, they had met again. But their hardships had been great, for though they had so-called liberty, every privilege belonging to a white man seemed to be denied them.
They resolved to fly with their brethren. Selling all they had, they managed to scrape together enough money to pay for their passage in the river steamer.
Penniless, famished, half dead, they arrived at St. Louis.