"You must not say dat, honey, chile. I has great hopes in your life. I has almos' wore out my ole brack knees a-prayin' an' a-prayin' to de good Lawd dat you might be de instrument to sabe your mudder from her sinful life."
Little Golden looked at her black mammy with a kind of pathetic wonder in her beautiful, tearful eyes.
"How could I do that, black mammy?" she said.
"By seekin' dat poor soul out, Miss Golden, and 'suadin' her to forsake dat wicked man, an' spend de balance ob her life in prayin' an' repentin' ob her deadly sins," said Dinah, devoutly and earnestly.
Golden sat up in the bed and looked at Dinah with eager, shining eyes and impulsively clasped hands.
"Ah, black mammy, if I only could," she cried; "but you forget I do not know where to find her. I do not even know the name of that dreadful man."
And she shivered at the thought of his wickedness. She remembered that he was her father, that his bad blood flowed in her veins.
Old Dinah was looking at her strangely.
"Little missie, what would you think if I could tell you his name?" she said, with a little note of triumph in her tone.
"Could you—oh, could you?" cried little Golden, impulsively.