"Can you walk, Hudson?" asked Virgie, when her horror would permit.
"Yes, child, I can walk, I reckon; but both my eyes is burned out. Oh, my pore old wife: she could nurse me so well. I have lost her."
The girl comforted the sightless man, and led him on, indifferent to danger. He waded the deep places, where the water soothed his wounds and filled his blistered sockets with cool mud.
"Blessed is the pure in heart," he murmured, as they reached some sandy ground and sank down. "You, Virgie, can see God; I never can."
The great Cypress Swamp of Delaware--counterpart of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia--the northern border of which they had now reached, had probably been once a great inlet or shallow bay in the encroaching sand-bar of the peninsula, and was filled with oysters and fish, which in time were imprisoned and became the manure of a cypress forest that soon started up when springs of water flowed under the sand and moistened the seed; and for ages these forests had been growing, and had been prostrated, and had dropped their leaves and branches in the great inlet's bed, until a deep ligneous mass of combustible stuff raised higher and higher the level of the swamp, and, dried with ages more of time than dried the mummies of the Pharaohs, it often opened tunnels to burrowing fire, which at some point of its course belched forth and lighted the hollow trees, and raged for weeks. Such a fire they had come through.
Virgie, in the early daylight, came upon a small, swarthy boy, driving a little cart and ox.
"Are you a colored boy?" Virgie asked.
"No," answered the boy, proudly. "I'm Indian-river Indian; reckon I'm a little nigger."
"Take this poor man in and I will pay you. Where are you going?"
"To Dagsborough landing, for salt."
"Leave me at Dagsborough, at the old Clayton house," spoke up the blind man; "it's empty. I can die thar or git a doctor."
Before the people were up they entered a little hamlet, on that stage road from which they had made the night's detour, and saw a few small houses and a little shingle-boarded church near by among the woods, and one large house of a deserted appearance was at the town's extremity. The man said, "This is John M. Clayton's birthplace: my wife used to work yer."
"Virgie!" exclaimed a familiar voice.
The girl turned, her ears still ringing with the echoes of the swamp, and saw a face she knew, and ran to the breast beneath it, crying,
"Samson Hat! Oh, friend, love me like my mother. I am very ill."
"Pore, darlin' child," Samson said; "no love will I ever bodder you wid agin but a father's. Why air you so fur from home?"
"I'm sold, Samson: I'm trying to get free. The kidnappers is after me. Oh, save me!"
"I've jist got away from 'em, Virgie. The ole woman, Patty Cannon, set me free. I promised her I would kidnap somebody younger dan ole Samson. Bless de Lord! I come dis way!"
He led her into the oak-trees of the old church grove, where English worship had been celebrated just a hundred years; and she gave him money to buy medicine and get a doctor for the blind man, and to purchase her a shawl at the store. Then Virgie sank into a fevered sleep under the old oak-trees, and, when she knew more, was gliding in a boat that Samson was sailing down a broad piece of water, and her head was in his lap.
"You air pure as an angel yit, my little creatur," Samson said; "and now I'm a-takin' you down the Indian River into Rehoboth Bay; and arter dark I'll git you up the beach to Cape Hinlopen, and maybe I kin buy you a passage on some of dem stone boats dat's buildin' de new breakwater dar, and dat goes back to de Norf."
"Oh, Samson, if I could love any man it would be you," Virgie said; "but I cannot love any now except my dear white father. Who is he?"
"De Lord, I reckon, has got yo' pedigree, Virgie."
"Am I dying, Samson?" asked the girl, wistfully, with her brilliant eyes full of fever. "Oh, friend, let me die so good that Miss Vesty and my father can come and kiss me!"
"Tell me about Princess Anne an' my dear old Marster Meshach Milburn, dat I'se leff so long, Virgie!" the old pugilist said, wiping his eyes of tears.
She began to try to remember, but faces and events ran into each other, and she felt aware that her mind was wandering, but could not bring it back; and so the boat, sailing in sight of the ocean and the stately ships there, grounded after noon almost within sound of the surf.
Sheltered in a piece of woods for some hours, Virgie found herself, at dark, carried in old Samson's arms up a beach of the sea where the sand was yielding and seldom firm, except at the very edge of the surf, which rolled ominously and at times became a roar, and often swept to the low, sedgy bank. Lightning played across the black sea, lifting it up, as it seemed, and showing vessels making either out or in, and finally thunder burst upon the gathering confusion, and Samson said:
"Dar's a gun in dat thunder!"
The next flash of lightning showed a vessel close to the shore, coming rapidly in on the southeaster, and her gun was fired again, and feeble hailing was heard; but the storm now broke all at once, and a wave threw Samson to the ground and nearly carried Virgie back with it to the boiling sea; but the faithful old man fought for her, and she ran at his side, uttering no complaint, till once, as they stopped to get breath, and the heavenly fire drew into sight every foot, as it seemed, of that vast ocean, cannonading it also with majestic artillery, the girl sighed,
"Freedom is beautiful!"
"Oh, Virgie," Samson answered, covering her with his own coat, "if I could buy you free, pore chile, I'd a-mos' go into slavery to save you from dis night."
"I can die in there," Virgie said, pointing to the waves; "they must not catch me."
A wail came out of the storm, so close before that it hushed them both, and the lightning lifted upon their eyes a stranding vessel, so close, it seemed, that they could touch it, and she was full of people, hallooing, but not in any intelligible tongue.
As the black night fell upon this magic-lantern sketch they heard a crash of wave and wood, and falling spars and awful shrieks, and, when the next vivid flash of lightning came, nothing was visible but floating substance, and spluttering cries came out of the bosom of the sea, and a black man, flung, as if out of a cannon, upon a wave that drenched these wanderers, struck the ground at their feet, and looked into Samson's eyes as the convulsion of death seized his chest and feet.
Before they could speak to each other, the beach was full of similar corpses, a moment before alive as themselves, and every one was naked and black.
"It's a slave-ship, foundered yer," cried Samson.
He caught at a yawl-boat driving past him, in the many things that drifted around their feet, and Virgie saw painted upon its bow the word "Ida."
"Samson," she said, feeling all the influences of Princess Anne again, and forgetting her own misery, "it's Mrs. Dennis's husband come home and shipwrecked."
When Virgie next remembered, she was on a vast hill of sand, near a lighthouse that was built upon it, and flashed its lenses sleepily upon a sullen break of day, the mutual lights showing the tops of trees rising out of the sand, where a forest had been buried alive, like little twigs in amber.
Almost naked with fighting the storm, Samson Hat slept at her side, peaceful as hale age and virtue could enjoy the balm of oblivion in life.
"Happy are the black," thought the sick girl, "that take no thought on things this white blood in me makes so big: on freedom and my father. Father, do love me before I die!"
She knelt on the great sand hillock by Cape Henlopen and prayed till she, too, lost her knowledge of self, and was sleeping again at Samson's side. She dreamed of innumerable angels flying all around her, and yet their voices were so harsh they awoke her at last, and still these seraphs were flying in the day. She saw their wings, and moved the old man at her side to say,
"Samson, why cannot these angels sing?"
The old man looked up and faintly smiled:
"Poor Virgie, dey is wild-fowls, all bewildered by dat storm: geese and swans. Dey can't sing like angels."
"Yes," said the girl; "something sings, I know. What is it?"
"Jesus, maybe," the negro answered, looking at her, his eyes full of tears.
The great Breakwater, which required forty years and nearly a million tons of stone to build it, was then just commencing, and where it was to be, within the shallow bight of Henlopen, they saw the wrecks of many vessels, some sunken, some shattered in collision, some stranded in the marsh, proving the needs of commerce for such a work, and also the fury of the storm that had so innocently vanished, like a sleeping tiger after his bloody meal.
In the gentle sunshine floated the American flag upon several vessels there--the flag that first kissed the breeze upon that spot in the year 1776, when Esek Hopkins raised over the Alfred the dyes of the peach and cream in the centre of his little squadron. And there, along the low bluff of the Kill, still lay the shingle-boarded town of Lewes, in the torpor of nearly two hundred years, or since the Dutch De Vries had settled it in 1631. Lord Delaware, Argall, and the Swede, Penn, Blackbeard, Paul Jones, Lord Rodney, a thousand heroes, had known it well; the pilots, like sea-gulls, had their nests there; the Marylanders had invaded it, the Tories had seized it, pirates had been suckled there; and now the courts and lawyers had forsaken it, to go inland to Georgetown.
"Virgie," said Samson, "I'll try to buy some of de stone-boat captains to carry you to Phildelfy."
He waded the Kill, carrying her, and left her in an old Presbyterian church at the skirt of Lewes, and procured medicine for her, and then labored in vain nearly all day to get her passage to a free state. The reply was invariable: "Can't take the risk of the whippin'-post and pillory for no nigger. Can't lose a long job like bringin' stone to the Breakwater to save one nigger."
At the hotel a colored man beckoned Samson aside--a fine-looking man, of a gingerbread color--and they went into the little old disused court-house, in the middle of a street, where there was a fire.
"Brother," said the stranger, "I see by your actions that you're trying to git a passage North. Is it fur yourself?"
"No," Samson said, taking an inventory of the other's fine chest and strength, and mentally wishing to have a chance at him; "I'm a free man, and kin go anywhere; but I have a friend."
"Why, old man," spoke the other, frankly, "I'm the agent of our society at this pint."
"What is it?" asked Samson, warily.
"The Protection Society. They educated me right yer. I went to school with white boys. Now, where is your friend?"
"What kin you do fur her?" asked Samson.
"It's a gal, is it? Why, I can just put her in my buggy, made and provided for the purpose, and drive her to the Quaker settlement."
"Where's that?"
"Camden--only thirty miles off. I've got free passes all made out. Give yourself, brother, no more concern."
Samson looked at the handsome person long and well. The man stood the gaze modestly.
"Oh, if I had some knowledge!" spoke Samson; "I might as well be a slave if I know nothin'. I can't read. I wish I could read your heart!"
"I wish you could," said the man; "then you would trust me."
"What is your name?"
"Samuel Ogg."
"I want you to hold up your hand and swear, Sam Ogg, that you will never harm the pore chile I bring you. Say, 'Lord, let my body rot alive, an' no man pity me, if I don't act right by her.'"
"It's a severe oath," said the stranger, "but I see your kind interest in the lady. Indeed, I'm only doing my duty."
He repeated the words, however, and Samson added, "God deal with you, Sam Ogg, as you keep dat oath. Now come with me!"
The girl was found asleep, but delirious, her large eyes, in which the blue and brown tints met in a kind of lake color, being wide open, and almost lost in their long lashes, while flood and fire, sun and frost, had beaten upon the slender encasement of her gentle life, that still kept time like some Parian clock saved from a conflagration, in whose crystal pane the golden pendulum still moves, though the hands point astray in the mutilated face.
Her teeth were shown through the loving lips she parted in her stormy dreams, like waves tossing the alabaster sails of the nautilus, or like some ear of Indian corn exposed in the gale that blows across the tasselled field.
Her raiment, partly torn from her, showed her supple figure and neck, and, beneath her mass of silky hair, her white arm, like an ivory serpent, sustained her head, her handsome feet being fine and high-bred, like the soul that bounded in her maiden ambition.
There had been days when such as she called Antony away from his wife, and Caesar from his classical selfishness; when on many an Eastern throne such beauty as this stirred to murmurous glory armies beyond compute, and clashed the cymbals of prodigious conquests. She lay upon the altar-cushions of the church, like young Isaac upon his father's altar, and where the mourners knelt to pray for God's reconcilement, the cruelty of their law flashed over her like Abraham's superstitious knife.
Priceless was this young creature, in noble hands, as wife or daughter, human food or fair divinity, and all the precious mysteries of woman awake in her to love and conjugality, like song and seed in the spring bird; yet a hard, steely prejudice had shut her out from every institution and equality, let every crime be perpetrated upon her, made the scent of freedom in her nostrils worse than the incentive of the thief, and has outlasted her half a century, and is self-righteous and inflexible yet.
In that old churchyard that enclosed her slept revolutionary officers, who helped to gain freedom: they might be willing to rise with her, not to be buried in the same enclosure.
How small is religion, how false democracy, how far off are the judgments of heaven! There stood over the pulpit an inscription, itself presumptuous with aristocracy, saying, "The dead in Christ shall rise first;" as if those truly dead in the humility of Christ would not prefer to rise last!
Samson watched his new friend narrowly, whose countenance was profoundly piteous, and his teeth and lip made a "Tut-tut!" Satisfied with the man, Samson knelt by Virgie and kissed her once.
"Pore rose of slavery," said Samson, "forgive me dat I courted you like a gal, instead of like an angel. I am old, and ashamed of myself. Dear, draggled flower, we may never meet agin. May the Lord, if dis is his holy temple, save you pure and find you a home, Virgie. Good-bye!"
"Come," said the man, as Samson sat bowed and weeping, "the buggy is ready; I'll wrap you warm, Miss."
"Freedom!" spoke the girl, awakening; "oh, I must find it."
The next that Virgie knew, she was in a cabin loft, and voices were heard speaking in a room below.
"See me!" said one; "we sell you, dat's sho'! See me now! You make de best of it. Sam Ogg yer, we sold twenty-two times. Sam will be sold wid you and teach yo' de Murrell game."
"Politely, gentlemen," said a feminine voice; "I don't know that I have the nerve for it. My occupation has been marrying them. It is true that the hue-and-cry has made that branch dull, but I had great talent for it."
"Kidnapping," said a third voice, "is running low. It surrounds the whole slave belt from Illinois to Delaware. The laws of Illinois were made in our interests till Governor Harrison, whose free man was kidnapped, raised an excitement out there six years ago. Newt Wright, Joe O'Neal, and Abe Thomas were the smartest kidnappers along the Kentucky line. But Joe Johnson, who is getting ready to go south, will be the last man of enterprise in the business. John A. Murrell's idea is to divide fair with black men, sell and steal them back, and I think it is sagacious. It's safer, any way, than Patty Cannon's other plan."
"What is that, Mr. Ogg?" said the feminine-voiced negro.
"Making away with the negro-traders, they say."
"See me! see me!" exclaimed the first voice. "Dey'll hang her some day fur dat."
"Now," resumed Mr. Ogg, "a man of intelligence like you and me, Mr. Ransom--pardon, sir, does your shackle incommode you? I'll stuff it with some wool--"
"Politely, Mr. Ogg; I'm ironed rather too tight."
"I say, Mr. Ransom, you and I can always play the average slaveholder for a fool. Why, I hardly get into any family before I make love to some member of it, and if I don't vamose with a black wench, it's with her mistress."
"Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting that!"
"Of course, but there's a grand tit-for-tat going through all nature. Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a man of art and enterprise like you, far exceed this poor, plain region. Take the roof off slavery and the blacks have rather the best of it; the whites would think so if they could see what is going on."
"Politely, Mr. Ogg; will not the entire institution some day blow itself out, like one of their Western steamboats?"
"No doubt of it, Mr. Ransom. When we have disposed of you, and you can see the country for yourself, observe how sensitive slaveholding is! A thousand anxieties lie in it. They believe in insurrections, rapes, and incendiaries. A perfect sleep they hardly know, but go prowling around night and day, driven by their suspicions. It makes them warlike, yet unhappy, and the slaves eat the ground poor. Besides, they have terrible enemies in the negro-traders, whom they look down on socially, and really drive them into sympathy with the negroes. Mr. Murrell, for instance, has a grand plan for a slave insurrection. He says white society is all against him, and he'll get even with it."
"See me, see me!" hoarsely chimed in another voice. "Slavery is bad scared, sho'! Joe Leonard Smith, Catholic, over on de western sho', has jess set twelve niggers free. Governor Charley Ridgely has set two hundred and fifty free. John Randolph, dey say, is gwyn to set more dan three hundred free. Dar's fifty abolition societies in Nawf Carolina, eleven in Maryland, eight in ole Virginny, two in Delaware. Ho, ho! dey set' em free and we'll steal' em back! Ole Derrick Molleston will never be out of pork an' money!"
"Politely, gentlemen," said the individual with the shackle. "Have you heard of the incendiary proclamation issued in Boston by David Walker, telling all slaves that it is their religious duty to rise?"
"Yes, and rise they will, but to what end? It will be a big scare, but no war. The next thing they will stop reading among all slaves, prevent emancipation by law, and watch the colored meeting-houses. The fire will be buried under the amount of the fuel, yet all be there."
"Mr. Ogg, your experience is remarkable. And you have been sold and run away in nearly every slave state? Politely, sir, are they not kidnapping white men, too? Who is this Morgan that was stolen last year in the State of New York?"
"Oh, that's a renegade Free Mason, Mr. Ransom. As much fuss is made over him as if we did not steal a hundred free people every day. It only shows that kidnapping of all sorts is getting to be unpopular. If a new political party can be made on stealing one white Morgan, don't you think another party will some day rise on stealing several millions of black Morgans?"
"See me! see me!" exclaimed the hoarse voice, suddenly.
"Escaping, are you?" cried the second voice.
"Politely, gentlemen, politely!" was heard from the third voice, some distance off in the dark, and then chasing footsteps followed, and Virgie arose and peeped below.
A fire was burning in a clay chimney beside a table, on which were meat and liquor. The girl swung herself out of the loft to the ground-floor, and, seizing the meat and bread, rushed noiselessly into the night.
She hardly knew what she was doing until she had crossed a bridge and come to the edge of a small town, around which she took a road to the right that led into another country road, and this she followed a mile or more, till she saw a small brick house, by a stile and pole-well, in the edge of woods.
The light from a little dormer-window in the garret beamed so brightly that it charmed Virgie's soul with the fascination of warmth and home, and, without thinking, she crossed the stile, bathed her hot temples at the well, and walked into the kitchen before the fire.
"Freedom!" said Virgie, wanderingly; "have I come to it?" She fell upon the rag carpet before the fire, saying, "Father, dear father," and did not move.
"Well," spoke a man of large paunch and black snake's eyes, sitting there, "it's not often people in search of freedom walk into Devil Jim Clark's!"
"She is white," exclaimed a woman, looking compassionately upon the stranger, "and she is dying."
"No," retorted the man, "she is too pretty to be white. This is the bright wench Sam Ogg was seen with. She belongs to Allan McLane, and there's a reward of five hundred dollars for her, but she'll bring two thousand in New Orleans for a mistress."
"Hush!" said the woman; "you may bring a judgment upon your daughters."
"Joe Johnson is about to sail," remarked Devil Jim Clark; "he shall take her with him."
The girl had heard that name through the thick chambers of oblivion. She rose and shrieked, and rushed into the woman's arms:
"Save me, mother, save me from that man!"
The woman's heart was pierced by the cry, and she folded Virgie to her breast and kissed her, saying:
"She shall sleep in our daughter's bed and rest her poor feet this night--our daughter, James, that we buried."
The man's mouth puckered a little; he looked uneasy, and drew his handkerchief to his eyes.
"You're all agin me! you're all agin me!" he bellowed, and rushed from the room.
The wife of Devil Jim Clark was a pious Methodist, and, with her rich-eyed daughter, spent the next day at Virgie's bedside, hearing her broken mutterings for fatherly love and Vesta's cherished remembrance.
"Your father is out for mischief," Mrs. Clark said. "Jump on your saddle-horse, my daughter, and ride to the Widow Brinkley's, just over the Camden line. Tell her to send for this girl."
"Mamma, they say she's an abolitionist."
"That's what I send you for. It's a race between you and your father. Be with me or with him!"
The girl tied on her hood, took her riding-whip, and departed.
In an hour she returned with a tidy black woman, whom Mrs. Clark took into Virgie's chamber.
"My heart bleeds for this poor girl," the hostess said. "They say your son spirits negroes North. Mr. Clark says so. I do not ask you if it is true, but, as one mother to another, I give you this girl. She is too white to be sold. She looks like a dead child of mine."
"Bill is not due home till sunset. If she is alive by that time, he has just time to drive her to Mr. Zeke Hunn's vessel at the mouth of the creek, which lies there every trip one hour--"
"To let runaways come aboard?"
"I have never been accused of helping them, Mrs. Clark."
The trader's wife slipped a bank-bill into the colored woman's hand.
"Lend to the Lord!" she said. "I depend upon you to save us the sin of selling this girl."
There came to the little black house that lurked by the woods two riding-horses, and stopped at the stile.
"Wait here!" said the voice of Devil Jim Clark. "Will you take her if she is still delirious?"
"Bingavast! Why not? I'm delirious myself, Jim, fur it's my wedding-night. I'll rest her at Punch Hall."
The herculean ruffian coolly proceeded to prepare some saddle-ropes to tie his victim before him on his horse. He was interrupted by a woman:
"Come and see your work, Joe Johnson!"
Following up the short cupboard stairs, the kidnapper was pointed to an object on the bed, with peaked face and sharpened feet, as it lay white as lime, with eyelashes folded and the arms drawn to its sides.
"Take her to Patty Cannon now," said Mrs. Clark, "who is only fit for dead company."
"The dell dead and undocked?" the ruffian exclaimed, slightly shrinking from the body; "maybe she's counterfeited the cranke. I'll search her cly. But, hark!"
A wagon and hoofs were heard.
"Joe," whispered the woman's husband, "you're only four mile from Dover. Maybe it's warrants for both of us?"
"Hike, then!" hissed the pallid murderer; "the world's agin me," and he slipped away with his companion.
"Now, Bill Brinkley," the wife of Devil Jim whispered, as a tall, ingenuous-looking colored boy came in the room, "you are just in time. She has had laudanum enough to keep her still; my daughter powdered her; let me kiss her once before she goes."
As the woman departed, the black boy, looking around him, muttered:
"Whar is dat loft? I've hearn about it."
Some movements overhead in the low dwelling directed his attention to a small trap-door, and, standing on a stool, he unbolted it and pushed it upwards, whispering,
"Any passengers for Philadelfy? De gangplank's bein' pulled in!"
First a woolly head, then another, and next two pairs of legs appeared above.
"Take hold yer and carry de sick woman to de dearborn," the boy said, not a particle disturbed, as two frightened blacks dropped from the loft, with handcuffs upon them.
In the clear evening a wagon sped along towards the east, through the saffron marshes, tramping down the stickweed and ironweed and the golden rod, and, while the people in it cowered close, the negro driver sang, as carelessly as if he was the lord of the country:
"De people of Tuckyhoe
Dey is so lazy an' loose,
Dey sows no buttons upon deir clothes,
And goes widout deir use;
So nature she gib dem buttons,
To grow right outen deir hides,
Dat dey may take life easy,
And buy no buttons besides.
"But de people of Tuckyhoe
Refuse to button deir warts,
Unless dey's paid a salary
For practisin' of sech arts;
Like de militia sogers,
Dat runs to buttons an' pay,
De folks is truly shifless,
On Tuckyhoe side of de bay."
A sail was seen in the starlight, rising out of the marshes at an old landing in the last elbow of Jones's Creek, and hardly had the fugitives been put on board when the anchor was weighed and the packet stood out for the broad Delaware, her captain a negro, her owner a Quaker.
The girl was awakened by the cold air of the bay striking her face.
"Freedom!" she murmured; "it must be this. Oh, I am faint for father's arms to take me."
Was this Teackle Hall that Virgie looked upon--a square, bright room, and her bed beside a window, and below her stretching streets of cobblestone and brick, and roofs of houses, to green marshes filled with cows, and a river that seemed blue as heaven, which sipped it from above like a boy drinking head downward in a spring? How beautiful! It must be freedom, Virgie thought, but why was she so cold? Her eyes, looking around the room, fell upon a lady in a cap, reading a tract to a large, shaven, square-jawed man, and this woman was of a silver kind of beauty, as if her mind had overflowed into her heart, and, not affecting it, had made her face of argent and lily, milk and sheen.
"What sayeth Brother Elias, Lucretia?"
"He sayeth, Thomas: 'This noble testimony, of refusing to partake of the spoils of oppression, lies with the dearly beloved young people of this day. We can look for but little from the aged, who have been accustomed to these things, like second nature. Without justice there can be no virtue. Oh, justice, justice, how art thou abused everywhere! Men make justice, like a nose of wax, to satisfy their desires. If the soul is possessed of love, there is quietness.'"
"Yes," said the girl, from the bed, thinking aloud; "love is quietness. Will father come!"
She dreamed and heard and looked forth again upon the hill descending to the river, the stately sails, the farther shore, so like her native region, and asked with her eyes what land they might be in.
"Wilmington," said the beautiful woman. "This is the house of Thomas Garrett, the friend of slaves. When you can be moved, it shall be to the green hills of the Brandywine, where all are free."
"Hills? What are they?" mused Virgie, looking at her wasted hand. "Must I climb any more? Must I wade the swamps again? I know I have a father somewhere."
She dreamed and wept unconsciously, and told of many things at Teackle Hall, being, indeed, a little child again, playing with her little mistress, Vesta. The stars stood in the sky right over her pillow, and she talked to them, and some she seemed to know, as little Vince, or little Roxy, or Master Willy Tilghman, all playmates of her childhood; but ever and anon these vanished, and the young Quaker woman was reading again from the sermons of Elias Hicks, and the words were: "Love is quietness;" "Light only can qualify the soul;" "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you."
"What Comforter?" sighed Virgie, and there seemed a great blank, and then she heard a scream--was it she that screamed so?--and she was trying with all her might to get somewhere, and was fainting in the labor, but trying again and again, and then a calmness that was like gentle awe, strange because so painless, spread into her nature, and she only listened.
"My daughter," said a voice, "my own child! Call me 'father,' and say I am forgiven."
"Father! forgiven!" she murmured, and felt a warm face, that yet could not warm her own, shedding tears and kissing her, and close to it her arms were thrown tight, as if she never could let go, and everything was music, but wonderful.
She feared she must fall if she did not hold to him. Who was it that called her "daughter"? Why came those cold stars so close, as if to spy upon him?
Oh, holy purity, that held so fast and did not know, but trusted nature's quivering embrace! She wrestled with something, like a rock of ice, to move her eyes and see, or ere she was dashed down forever, the eyes that gushed for her. They were her master's.
"Master," she said, "whose am I?"
"Mine before God. Pure to my heart as your white sister, Vesta! White as young love, in fondness and trust forever!"
"And mother?" gurgled the girl's low notes; "where is she?"
"Yonder," said the Judge, "in Heaven, that will judge me, whither she winged in bearing thee to me!"
A happy light came over Virgie's face. She kissed her father twice, as if the second kiss was meant for her happier sister, and, raising her arms towards the sky he pointed to, whispered, "Freedom!" and died upon his breast.
