In grateful recognition of his long servitude a comfortable cottage was built for him in a secluded nook of the plantation, in which, with his faithful old wife, he lived a peaceful and contented life, tilling the few acres which had been granted him and doing all sorts of odd jobs out of the pure love he bore old marse.
But Uncle Jake was getting old now—more and more heavily the weight of years fell upon him—the whiter grew his locks until at last the time came when he could no longer pursue his accustomed duties, and all reluctant and unwilling he took to his bed never to rise again.
For weeks and months he lingered on the "Border Land," attended by loving hands, and his slightest wish was gratified; indeed, so long he hovered between life and death, that those who loved him best began to cherish a faint hope that he would be spared to them.
But the fiat had gone forth—Uncle Jake must die.
One evening, just as the setting sun was flooding the fair landscape with his golden beams, a tearful group were assembled at his bedside, who had been hastily summoned thither to bid farewell to one who had been so true a friend to them all.
There were marster and missus and their children and Jake's own wife and children, with a few of his fellow servants, all united in a democracy of grief that knew no distinction of caste in the supreme moment.
No sound was heard save a half-suppressed sob now and then—the tick-tick of the clock on the rude mantel and the labored breathing of the dying man.
For hours he had lain in a sort of stupor, broken only at intervals by delirious mutterings, when suddenly his eyes, in which was a preternatural brightness, opened and fixed themselves long and earnestly in turn upon each one of the faces bent so sorrowfully over him.
Then in a feeble, fluttering voice, like the last effort of an expiring taper, he addressed his master, who was tenderly wiping the moisture from his brow:
"Ole marse, I'se been a good and faithful servant to yer all dese years, has I not?"