That night Abe appeared at the cabin of his wife, a slave on a distant plantation. There he briefly told the story of his wrongs, adding: ‘I am going to-night. It may be long before you see me; but if it is fifty years, I will come back for you, if you are faithful.’
Phyllis promised to be true; and kept her promise as slaves do; that is, she married—they called it marrying—the first man who asked her.
The five years of the war had come and gone, and ten years more. Major Randolph, past middle age, and utterly ruined, was trying, in a small Virginian town, to take up the profession of law, which, in happier days, he had studied, but had not cared to practise; and the widow of Hartley, who had meantime died bankrupt, was keeping a boarding-house in the same place; when, on a certain forenoon, there was shown into the Randolphs’ parlour a tall, portly, middle-aged man, gentlemanly in appearance, and thoroughly well dressed, but perfectly black. The Irish maid-of-all-work had forgiven his colour for the sake of his clothes.
Mr Randolph happened to be at home, and it was to him the stranger eagerly turned. ‘Marse Dick!’ he cried.
‘Abe!’
And Abe it was. And there were tears in at least three pairs of eyes as the master and slave of former days shook hands.
Well, Abe might have been a long-lost brother, Major Randolph was so glad to see him. He made him tell his adventures from the time he left Hartley until he appeared in the Randolphs’ parlour; he showed him his sons and his daughters, and rattled on about old days. But never a word did he say about wounds and losses and disappointments; though it could hardly have escaped Abe’s affectionate eyes that, while his own outer man bore such marks of prosperity, his old master’s had grown actually shabby.
By ways and means generally forthcoming to border negroes who had the courage and prudence to avail themselves of them, Abe had gone northward first, returning to Virginia, however, the moment the emancipation proclamation was issued. Hearing of Major Randolph’s absence and his own wife’s unfaithfulness, he had wandered farther and farther from his old home, and had settled at last in a far south-western state. There he had worked steadily; at first on shares, then for himself; till at the time of his visit to Virginia, he was the manager and largest shareholder of the celebrated Hot Springs of A——.
Need I say how earnestly ‘Marse Dick’ was besought to try the springs for his rheumatism, to bring ‘Miss Laura’ and the family, to enjoy horses and carriages, to fish and hunt, and generally to enter into possession?