“Oh! if it had only pleased God to spare thee, Mamba—thou crumb of my life!—my dear, my only son!” She broke out thus one day when the sympathetic Ra-Ruth sought to comfort her. “I was beginning to get over the loss of his father—it was so many years ago that they took him from me! and as my boy grew up, the likeness to my Andrianivo was so strong that I used to try to think it was himself; but—now—both—”
“Are with the Lord, which is far better,” said Ra-Ruth, tenderly laying her hand on Reni’s arm.
“You are young to give such comfort,” returned Reni, with a sad smile.
“It is not I who give it, but the Lord,” returned Ra-Ruth. “And you forget, mother, that I am old in experience. When I stood on the edge of the Rock of Hurling, that awful day, and saw the dear ones tossed over one by one, I think that many years passed over my head!”
“True—true,” returned the other, “I am a selfish old woman—forgetting others when I think so much of myself. Come—let us go to the meeting. You know that the congregation assembles to-day for the first time after many, many, years—so many!”
“Yes, mother, I know it. Indeed I came here partly to ask you to go with me. And they say that Totosy, the great preacher, is to speak to us.”
Many others besides these two wended their way to the meeting-house that day. Among them was a group in which the reader is perhaps interested. It consisted of Mark Breezy, John Hockins, Ebony Ginger, Samuel Ravoninohitriniony, Laihova, and Voalavo.
“Well now, this is the queerest go-to-meetin’ that I’ve had to do with since I was a babby,” remarked Hockins, as he looked from side to side upon the varied crowd of men and women, black, brown, and yellow, rich and poor, noble and slave, who were joyfully and noisily thronging to the house of God!
“Das true,—an’ look dar!” said Ebony, pointing to a young woman who was standing as if thunder-struck before a worn-out, feeble, white-haired man in tattered garments, with a heavy iron collar on his neck.
Recovering from her surprise, the young woman uttered the word “Father” with a wild shriek, and rushed into the old man’s arms.