When the smoke of the battle cleared away, my mother and her ebony charge returned home. Toby quickly sought his pallet, and burning fever soon rendered him delirious the greater part of the time. In one of his lucid intervals, he asked me to read the Bible to him, and he told me what he wanted me to read about, and said:
“Miss Missouri used to read it to me, and I thought it was so pretty.” And I read to him the story of the cross—of Jesus’ dying love, and he listened and believed. I said to him:
“My boy, do you think you are going to die?”
“Yes’m, I think I am.”
I bowed my head close to him and wept, oh, how bitterly.
“Miss Mary, don’t you think I’ll go to heaven?” he anxiously asked.
“Toby, my boy, there is one thing I want to tell you; can you listen to me?”
“Yes’m.”
“I have not always been just to you. I have often accused you of doing things that I afterwards found you did not do, and then I was not good enough to acknowledge that I had done wrong. And when you did wrong, I was not forgiving enough; and more than once I have punished you for little sins, when I, with all the light before me, was committing greater ones every day, and going unpunished, save by a guilty conscience. And now, my boy, I ask you to forgive me. Can you do it?”
“Oh, yes’m!”