Hester had a question. "Do it all go to de credito's anyhow, Miss 'Liza, no matteh how much us bring?" and when aunt said yes, Sidney murmured to her mother, "I tol' you dat." I wondered when she had told her.

Uncle and aunt tried hard to find one buyer for the four, but failed; n.o.body who wanted the other three had any use for Mingo. It was after nightfall when they came dragging home. "Now don't you fret one bit 'bout dat, Mawse Ben," exclaimed Sidney, with a happy heroism in her eyes that I remembered afterward. "'De Lawd is perwide!'"

"Strange," said my aunt to uncle and me aside, smiling in pity, "how slight an impression disaster makes on their minds!" and that too I remembered afterward.

As soon as we were alone in my chamber, Sidney and I, she asked me to tell her again of the clock in the sky, and at the end of her service and of my recital she drew me to my window and showed me how promptly she could point out the pole-star at the centre of the clock's vast dial, although at our right a big moon was leaving the tree tops and flooding the sky with its light. Toward this she turned, and lifting an arm with the reverence of a priestess said, in impa.s.sioned monotone:

"'De moon shine full at His comman'

An' all de stahs obey.'"

She kissed my hand as she added good-by. "Why, Sidney!" I laughed, "you mean good night, don't you?"

She bent low, t.i.ttered softly, and then, with a swift return to her beautiful straightness, said: "But still, Miss Maud, who eveh know when dey say good night dat it ain't good-by?" She fondled my hand between her two as she backed away, kissed it fervently again, and was gone.

When I awoke my aunt stood in broad though sunless daylight at the bedside, with the waking cup of coffee which it was Sidney's wont to bring. I started from the pillow. "Oh! what--who--wh'--where's Sidney? Why--how long has it been raining?"

"It began at break of day," she replied, adding pensively, "thank G.o.d."

"Oh! were we in such bad need of rain?"

"_They_ were--precisely when it came. Rain never came straighter from heaven."

"They?"--I stared.

"Yes; Silas and Hester--and Sidney--and Mingo. They must have started soon after moonrise, and had the whole bright night, with its black shadows, for going."

"For going where, auntie; going where?"

"Then the rain came in G.o.d's own hour," she continued, as if wholly to herself, "and washed out their trail."

I sprang from the bed. "Aunt 'Liza!"

"Yes, Maud, they've run away, and if only they may _get_ away. G.o.d be praised!"

Of course, I cried like an infant. I threw myself upon her bosom.

"Oh, auntie, auntie, I'm afraid it's my fault! But when I tell you how far I was from meaning it----"

"Don't tell me a word, my child; I wish it were my fault; I'd like to be in your shoes. And, I don't care how right slavery is, I'll never own a darky again!"

One day some two months after, at home again with father. Just as I was leaving the house on some errand, Sidney--ragged, wet, and bedraggled as a lost dog--sprang into my arms. When I had got her reclothed and fed I eagerly heard her story. Three of the four had come safely through; poor Mingo had failed; if I ever tell of him it must be at some other time. In the course of her tale I asked about the compa.s.s.

"Dat little trick?" she said fondly. "Oh, ya.s.s'm, it wah de salvation o' de Lawd 'pon cloudy nights; but time an' ag'in us had to sepa'ate, 'llowin' fo' to rejine togetheh on de bank o' de nex' creek, an' which, de Lawd a-he'pin' of us, h-it al'ays come to pa.s.s; an' so, afteh all, Miss Maud, de one thing what stan' us de bes' frien' night 'pon night, next to Gawd hisse'f, dat wah his clock in de ske-eye."

VI

"Landry," Chester said next day, bringing back the magazine barely half an hour after the book-shop had reopened, "that's a true story!"

"Ah, something inside tells you?"

"No need! You remember this, near the end? '_Poor Mingo had failed [to escape]; if I ever tell of him it must be at another time_.'

Landry, it's so absurd that I hardly have the face to say it; I've got--ha-ha-ha!--I've got a ma.n.u.script! and it fills that gap!" The speaker whipped out the "Memorandum"; "Here's the story, by my own uncle, of how the three got over the border and how Mingo failed. I'd totally forgotten I had it. I disliked its beginning far more than I did 'Maud's' yesterday. For I hate masks and costumes as much as Mr.

Castanado loves them; and a practical joke--which is what the story begins with, in costume, though it soon leaves it behind--nauseates me.

Comical situation it makes for me, this 'Memorandum,' doesn't it--turning up this way?"

Ovide replied meditatively: "To lend it, even to me, would seem as though you sought----"

"It would put me in a false light! I don't like false lights."

"It would mask and costume you."

"Why, not so badly as if I were really in society; as, you know, I'm not! The only place where any man, but especially a society man, can properly seek a girl's society is in society. The more he's worthy to meet her, the more hopelessly--I needn't say hopelessly, but completely--he's cut off from meeting her any other way. Isn't that a gay situation? Ha-ha-ha!"

"You would probably move much in society, even Creole society, without meeting mademoiselle; she has less time for it than you."

"Is that so?"

Cupid, the evening before, had carried a flat, square parcel like a shop's account-books to be written up under the home lamp. Staring at Landry, Chester rather dropped the words than spoke them: "Think of it!

The awful pity! For the like of her! Of her! Why, how on earth--?

No, don't tell! I know what I'd think of any other man following in her wake and asking questions while hard fortune writes her history. A girl like her, Landry, has no business with a history!"

"Mr. Chester."

"Yes?"

"Has that 'Memorandum' never been printed? I can find out for you, in _Poole's Index_."

"Do it! It's good enough, and it's named as if to be printed. See?

'The Angel of----'"

"Then why not have Mr. Castanado, while selecting a publisher for mademoiselle's ma.n.u.script, select for both?"

Chester shone: "Why--why, happy thought! I'll consider that, indeed I will! Well, good mor'----"

"Mr. Chester."

"Well?"

"Why did you want that new book yesterday?"

"I've met that nice old man the book calls 'the judge,' and he's coaxed me to break my rules and dine with him, at his home uptown, to-night."

"I'm glad. Madame, his wife, was my young mistress when I was a slave.

I wish her granddaughter and his grandson--they also are married--were not over in the war--Red Cross. You'd like them--and they would like you."