Down in the meadow-land and at the rear of the building, dusky forms are seen—the negroes, who have come to their Northern home, and with them the runaway. Ashamed of his desertion he has returned to his former master, resenting the name of contraband, and denouncing the ultra-abolitionist as humbugs, who deserved putting in the front of every battle. Hugh knows it will be hard accustoming these blacks to Northern usages but as he has their good in view, he feels sure that in time he will succeed, and cares but little for the opinion of those who wonder what he “expects to do with that lazy lot of niggers.”
On a rustic seat, near a rear door, white-haired old Sam is sitting, listening intently, while dusky Mug, reads to him from the book of books, the one he prizes above all else, stopping occasionally to expound, in his own way, some point which he fancies may not be clear to her, likening every good man to “Massah Hugh,” and every bad one to the leader of the “Suddern Federacy,” whose horse he declares he held once in “ole Virginny,” telling Mug, in an aside, “how, if ’twant wicked, not agin de scripter, he should most wish he’d put beech-nuts under Massah Jeffres’ saddle, and so broke his fetch-ed neck, ’fore he raise sich a muss, runnin’ calico so high that Miss Ellis ’clar she couldn’t ’ford it, and axin’ fifteen cents for a paltry spool of cotton.”
In the stable-yard, Claib, his good-humored face all aglow with pride, is exercising Rocket, who arches his neck as proudly as of old, and dances mincingly around, while Lulu leans over the gate, watching not so much him as the individual who holds him. And now that it grows darker, and the ripple of the river sounds more like eventide, lights gleam from the pleasant parlor where Mrs. Worthington and Aunt Eunice are sitting by the cheerful fire, just kindled on the marble hearth. Thither Hugh and Alice repair, while one by one the negroes come quietly in, and kneeling side by side, follow with stammering tongues, but honest hearts, their beloved master as he says first the prayer our Saviour taught, and then with words of thankful praise asks God to bless and keep him and his in the days to come, even as he has blessed and kept them in the days gone by.
THE END
1874. 1874.
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