How the days of this year flew past us, we were borne along swiftly on their wings, and every week was filled to overflowing with pleasant care and work. John was called in the South after his master's name, but now he said, inasmuch as he had left him and the old home in Newbern, it would seem better to him to be called by his father's name, and so he took his place among us as John Jones. He went to work with a will, became a great friend to Ben and helped him wonderfully, for between the saw-mill, the farm with its stock-raising and broom trade, which really was getting to be a good business, Ben was more than busy.

John was a mechanic naturally; he was clever at most anything he put his mind on, "and never tried to get shet of work;" and his daily work proved his worth among us. Matthias worked and sang the long days through, and all was bright and beautiful before him. He tried to think John's angel mother could look down from "hevin" on him, and it gave him pleasure to feel so.

When the fall came John said to Louis:

"I want to know something. I promised the boys and gals that when I got free I'd speak a few words for them, and I must learn something."

So he came regularly to Louis through the winter evenings, and in a little time he could send a readable letter to the friends down South. Newbern was a nice place, had nice people, he told us, and he had been well treated and permitted to learn to read, but the writing he could not find time to master; he was skilful in figures, and Louis was very proud of his rapid improvement.

In our meetings he gradually came to feel at home, and at last surprised us one evening by a recital of his life, and an earnest appeal to Christians to forget not those who looked to the star in the North as to a light that promised them freedom and the comforts of a home. His large, expressive eyes grew luminous with feeling, and as he stood, rapt in his own thought, which carried him back to the old home, he seemed like a tower of strength in our midst, and when at the close of the meeting, as we walked behind them, he took his father's arm, I heard Matthias say:

"John, you's done made me proud as Loosfer."

And his handsome son bowed his head as he answered:

"Thank the God who made us all to be brothers that I have the power to tell these thoughts that rise within me. You feel just as I do, father, only you can't express it, because they did not let you grow. The heavy weight of slavery has held you close to the ground, and this is the foundation of the system. The ignorance of the chattel is the life that feeds the master's power. Like horses, if slaves knew this power, they could break their bondage, and no hand on earth could stop them."

Among the pleasant occurrences of this summer were the picnics of the mill children, who enjoyed two days in July and two days in August rambling in the woods and taking dinner in the old hemlock grove, where the trees had been so lavish of their gifts that a soft carpet of their fallen leaves covered the ground the long year through. The coolness of this beautiful shelter was most refreshing, and it seemed as if nature knew just how much room was needed to spread our lunch-cloth, for there was the nicest spot in the world right in the heart of the grove, and as we sat around our lowly table every third or fourth person had a splendid hemlock tree to lean against. This was a rare treat to the mill children, and oh, the faces of the pictures we painted in these days.

Willie and Burton both had their own friends with them, and when in conversation Louis spoke of the work of repairing the church and putting in new pews, Burton Brown said:

"My father can do such work."

"Can you, Mr. Brown?" said Louis.

"Yes, sir," he replied; "working in lumber is my trade; change and hard luck forced me into the mill."

I cannot tell you of all the events that occurred among us, but when the smoke from a new chimney rose in the very spot almost where Aunt Hildy's cottage stood, it was due to the fact that a new double house had been erected on a splendid lot, and Willie and Burton were living there with their parents.

Mrs. Moore had grown young looking, though the grey hairs that mingled with the brown still held their places. Mr. Brown did not meet temptations here, and as Aunt Hildy said:

"Headin' him off in a Christian way was the thing that saved him; poor critter, his stomach gnawed, and he needed just them bitters I made for him, and Louis' kind treatment and planning to help him be born agin, and its done good and strong, jest as I knew it would be."

Two more little mill boys were brought to Jane to take the places of Willie and Burton, and Louis kept walking forward, turning neither to the right nor left, bringing the comforts of living to the hearts that had known only the gathering of crumbs from the tables of the rich, and the few scattering pennies that chanced occasionally to fall from their selfish palms.

Clara's glad smile and happy words made a line of sunshine in our lives, and the three years following this one, which had brought so many pleasant changes, were as jewels in the coronet of active thought and work, which we were day by day weaving for ourselves and each other.

When Southern Mary left us, she gave to Aunt Hildy something to help make out Jane North's pension papers, and the first step Aunt Hildy took toward doing this was in the fall of 1853, when she painted Jane's house inside and out. Then in the next year she built a new fence for her, and insisted on helping Louis make some improvements needed to give more room, and from this time the old homestead where Jane's father and mother had lived and died, became the children's home, with Jane as its presiding genius, having help to do the work. From six to eight children were with her; three darling little girls whom Louis found in the streets of a city in the winter of 1855, were brought to the Home by him, and he considered them prizes.

To be independent in thought and action was Louis' wisdom. He had regard for the needs of children as well as of adults, for he remembered that the girls and boys are to be the men and women of the years to come, and to help them help themselves was his great endeavor.

"For this," he would say, "is just what our God does for us, Emily. He teaches the man who constantly observes all things around him, that the proper use of his bounty is what he most needs to know, and to live by the side of natural laws, moving parallel with them, is the only way to truthfully solve life's master problem. Yea, Emily, painting pictures is grand work; to see the ideal growing as a reality about us, to know we are the instruments in God's hands for doing great good; and are not the years verifying the truth of what I said to you, when a boy I told you I needed your help, and also that you did not know yourself? I knew the depth of your wondrous nature. My own Emily, you are a glorious woman," and as tenderly as in the olden days, with the great strength of his undying love, he gathered me in silence to his heart. How many nights I passed to the land of dreams thinking, "Oh, if my Louis should die!"

Father and mother were enjoying life, and when Aunt Phebe came to see us, bringing a wee bit of a blue-eyed daughter, she said, "If I should have to leave her, I should die with the knowledge that she would find a home among you here."

"I don't see why we haint thought out sooner," said Aunt Hildy; "you see folks are ready, waitin', only they don't know whar to begin such work, and now there's Jane North, I'll be bound she'd a gone deeper and deeper into tattlin', ef the right one hadn't teched her in a tender spot, and now she's jest sot her heart into the work, and as true as you live, she's growin' handsome in doin' it. I'm ashamed of myself to think I have wasted so much time. Oh, ef I'd got my eyes open thirty years ago."

"Better late than never," said Aunt Phebe; "live and learn; it takes one life to teach us how to prize it, but the days to come will be full of fruit to our children, I hope."

"Wall ef we sow the wind we reap the whirlwind sure, Miss Dayton."

Aunt Phebe was very desirous that John should see Mr. Dayton, which he did, and an offer to study with him the higher mathematics was gladly accepted, and between these two men sprang a friendship which was enduring.

Uncle Dayton had helped many a one through the tangled maze of Euclid problems and their like, and when John walked along by his side in ease and pleasure, Mr. Dayton was delighted; and when he came to see us, he said:

"The fellow is a man, he's a man clear through.

"Why," said he, "I was just the one to carry him along all right. I was the first man to take a colored boy into a private school, and I did it under protest, losing some of the white boys, whose parents would not let them stay; not much of a loss either," he added, "though they behaved nearly as well as the colored boys I took. I belonged at the time to the Baptist Church; the colored woman, whose two sons I received into my school, was a member of the same church; three boys, whose parents were my brothers and sisters in the faith, were withdrawn, and the minister who had baptized us all, and declared us to be one in the name of the humble Nazarene, also withdrew his son from my school, being unwilling to have him recite in the class with these two boys, whose skin was almost as white as his own. The natural inference was, that he considered himself of more consequence than the Almighty, for he certainly had given us all to him, and I had verily thought the man meant to help God do part of his work, but this proved conclusively that the Lord had it all to do—at any rate that which was not nice enough for the parson—and it took a large piece of comfort out of my heart. I was honest in trying to do my duty, and it grieved me to think he was not. Another young colored boy whom I took, is a physician in our city to-day, and another who came to my house to be instructed has been graduated at the Normal School of our State with high honors, being chosen as the valedictorian of the class, and he is to-day principal of a Philadelphia school.

"I tell you this truth has always been before me, and I have run the risk of my life almost daily in practising upon it. My school was really injured for a time, and dwindled down to a few scholars, but I kept right along, and the seed which was self-sowing, sprang up around me, and to-day I have more than I can do, and the people know I am right."

The blue eyes of Mr. Dayton sparkled as he paused in his recital, running his fingers through his hair, and for a time evidently wandering in the labyrinthine walks of the soul's mathematics, whose beautifully defined laws might make all things straight, and it was only the sight of John's towering form in the doorway that roused him, and he said:

"I have brought to you Davies' Legendre. I thought he would receive more thanks in the years to come than now, for is it not always so? Are not those who move beyond the prescribed limits of the circle of to-day, unappreciated, and must we not often wait for the grave to cover their bodies, and their lives to be written, ere we realize what their hearts tried to do for us? It is a sad fact, and one which shapes itself in the mould of a selfish ignorance, which covers as a crust the tender growing beauty of our inner natures.

It was a cold day in December, 1856, when we were startled to see Jane coming over the hill in such a hurried way that we feared something was the matter with the children. These children were dear to me. Hal and Mary had a beautiful boy two and a half years old, but no bud had as yet nestled against my heart.

I met her at the gate and asked, "What's the matter with the children?"

"Go into the house, Emily De-mond, 'taint the children, it's me." She wanted us all to sit down together.

"Oh! dear, dear me, what can I do? I'm out of my head almost."

We gathered together in the middle room, and waited for her to tell us, but she sat rocking, as if her life depended on it, full five minutes before she could speak—it seemed an hour to me—finally she screamed out:

"He's come back!"

"Whom do you mean?" I cried, while mother and Aunt Hildy exchanged glances.

"He came last night; he's over to the Home, Miss Patten, d'ye hear?"

"Jane," said Aunt Hildy in a voice that sounded so far away it frightened me, "do you mean Daniel?"

"Yes, yes; he's come back, and he wants me to forgive him, and I must tell it, he wants me to marry him. I sat up all night talkin' and thinkin' what I can do."

"Jane," said Aunt Hildy, in that same strange voice, "has he got any news?"

"Both of 'em dead. Oh, Miss Patten, you'll die, I know you'll die!"

"No, I shan't. I died when they went away."

"What can I do, Miss Patten? Oh, some of you do speak! Mis' De-mond, you tell; you are allus right."

Clara crossed the room, and kneeling on the carpet before her, said:

"My dear soul, is it the one you told me of?"

"Yes, yes," said Jane, "the very one; gall and worm-wood I drank, and all for him; he ran away and—"

"Yes," added Aunt Hildy, "tell it all. Silas and our boy went with him, father and son, and Satan led 'em all."

"Has he suffered much?" said Clara.

"Oh, yes, marm, but he says he can't live without me! He hain't never been married; I'm fifty-four, and he's the same age."

"Jane," said Clara, "I guess it will be all right; let him stay with you."

"How it looks," interrupted Jane; "they'll all know him."

"Never mind. The Home is a sort of public institution now; let him stay, and in three weeks I'll tell you all about it."

"Get right up off this floor, you angel woman, and lemme set on the sofy with you," said Jane.

Louis and I left the room, and after an hour or so Jane went over the hill, and Aunt Hildy stepped as firmly as before she came. Poor Aunt Hildy, this was the sorrow she had borne. I was glad she knew they were dead, for uncertainty is harder to bear than certainty. I wondered how it came that I should never have known and dimly remembered something about some one's going away strangely, when I was a little girl. My mother had, like all Aunt Hildy's friends, kept her sorrow secret, and she told me it was a rare occurrence for Aunt Hildy to mention it even to her, whom she had always considered her best friend.

If Jane had not herself been interested, it would have leaked out probably, but these two women, differing so strangely from each other, had held their secrets close to their hearts, and for twenty-five long years had nightly prayed for the wanderers.

Aunt Hildy's husband was a strange man; their boy inherited his father's peculiarities, and when he went away with him was only sixteen years of age.

Daniel Turner was twenty-nine, and the opinion prevailed that he left home because he was unwilling to marry Jane, although they had been for several years engaged, and she had worked hard to get all things ready for housekeeping. He was not a bad-looking man, and evidently possessed considerable strength.

Clara managed it all nicely, and when the three weeks' probation ended, they were quietly married at Mr. Davis', and Mr. Turner went to work on the farm which Jane had for many years let out on shares. He worked well through the rest of the winter, and the early spring found him busy doing all that needed to be done.

He was interested in our scheme, and felt just pride in the belongings of the Home, which was really settling into a permanency. We sometimes had letters of interrogation and of encouragement as well, from those who, hearing of us, were interested.

Louis often said the day would come when many institutions of this kind would be established, for the object was a worthy one, and no great need can cry out and not finally be heard, even though the years may multiply ere the answer comes.

"Changes on every hand," said Mr. Davis, "and now that the pulpit has come down nearer to the people, and I can send my thoughts directly into their hearts, instead of over their heads, as I have been so often forced to do, we may hope that the chain of our love will weld us together as a unit in strength and feeling. I almost wish our town could be called New Light, for it seems to me the world looks new as it lies about us. The lantern of love, we know, is newly and well trimmed, and I feel its light can never die; it may give place to one which is larger, and whose rays can be felt further, but it can never die. I really begin to believe there is no such thing as death. I dislike the word, for it only signifies decay. I call it change, and that seems nearer right."

"So it is, Mr. Davis," said Clara, as he talked earnestly with us of his interest in the children and the people about us, "for, even as children are gradually changing into men and women, so shall our expanding lives forever climb to reach the stature of our angelhood, which must come to us when we let the perishable garments fall, and the mortal puts on its immortality. If we all could only see that our Father will help us to shape these garments even here; could we know that stitches daily taken in the garment that our soul desires are necessary that it may be ready for us when we enter there,—how great would be the blessing! This would relieve death of its clinging fears, and our exit from earth and entrance to the waiting city would be made as a pleasant journey.

"Louis, dear boy, feels all this, and if the cold hearts of speculative men could be warmed and softened into an unfolding life, he would not constantly do battle with the wrong; but truth is mightier than error. God's love must at last be felt, and when the delay is over, how many hearts, now deaf to his entreaties, will say with one accord, 'we are sorry, if we could live our days over, we would help you!'"

Louis did do battle, that is true; he paid due respect to people of all classes, but fearlessly and trustfully he dealt, both by word and practice, vigorous blows against all enslaving systems. He said to us sometimes, that when he went to the mill—as he constantly did, working until every one of the twenty boys to whom he promised liberty, found it—he came in contact with three different conditions; he classified them as mind, heart and soul. "When I talk to them," he said, "or if I go there on my mission and speak no words, I hear their souls say 'he is right and we are wrong;' I hear the earthly hearts whisper hoarsely, 'curse the plans of that fellow, he is in our way;' and the worldly policy of the mind steps forth upon the balcony of the brain and says, 'treat him well, it is the best policy to pursue, for he has money.' Yes, my Emily, I thank God for the fortune my father left me, hidden in the silver service. It shall all be used. You and I will use it all. And was the bequest not typical, its very language being 'a fortune in thy service, oh, my father!'"

"I never thought of this; how wonderful you are, Louis," I said.

"And you, my Emily, my companion, may our work be the nucleus around which shall gather the work of ages yet to be, for it takes an age, you know, to do the work of a year—almost of a day."

Our lives ran on like a strong full tide, and all our ships were borne smoothly along for four full years. An addition had been made to Jane's house, and her husband proved loyal and true, so good and kind and earnest in his work that Aunt Hildy said:

"I have forgotten to remember his dark days, and I really don't believe he'd ever have cut up so ef Silas had let him alone."

Good Mrs. Davis had sought rest and found it, and a widowed niece came as house-keeper. John Jones was growing able to do the work he promised the girls and boys down South, and lectured in the towns around us, telling his own story with remarkable eloquence for one who had no early advantages. He was naturally an orator, and only needed a habit of speaking to make apparent his exceptional mental capacity. Aunt Hildy was not as strong when 1860 dawned upon us, and she said on New Year's evening, which with us was always devoted to a sort of recalling of the past:

"Don't believe I'll be here when sixty-one comes marchin' in."

Clara looked at her with a strange light in her eyes, and said:

"Dear Aunt Hildy, wait for me, please; I'd like to go just when you do."

It was the nineteenth day of April this year, when an answer to a prayer was heard, and a little wailing sound caused my heart to leap in gratitude and love. A little dark-eyed daughter came to us, and Louis and I were father and mother. She had full dark eyes like his, Clara's mouth, and a little round head that I knew would be covered with sunny curls, because this would make her the picture I had so longed to see.

"Darling baby-girl, why did you linger so long? We have waited till our hope had well-nigh vanished," and the dark eyes turned on me for an answer, which my heart read, "It is well."

Louis named her "Emily Minot Desmonde." It was his wish, and while, as I thought, it ill suited the little fairy, I only said:

"May she never be called 'Emily did it.'"

"May that be ever her name," said Louis, "for have you not yourself done that of which she will be always proud, and when we are gone will they who are left not say of you, 'Emily did it'?

"Ah! my darling, you have lost and won your title, and it comes back shaped and gilded anew, for scores of childish lips have echoed it, and 'Emily did it' is written in the indelible ink of the great charity which has given them shelter."

"Louis, too," I said, and he answered:

"Had I not found my Emily, I could never have undertaken it. You cannot know how I gathered lessons from your happy home. In my earliest years I was dissatisfied with the life which money could buy. I did not know the comforts of work and pleasure mingled, and it was here, under these grand old hills, while communing with nature, I sought and found the presence of its Infinite Creator; and your smile, your presence, was a promise to me which has been verified to the letter."

When Clara held our wondrous blessing in the early days of its sweet life, she looked sometimes so pensively absent that I one day asked her if she did not wish Emily had come sooner.

"Ah! my Emily, mother; 'tis a wrong, wrong thought, still I cannot deny it;" and a mist covered her tender eyes. My heart stood still, for I knew she felt that her hand would not lead our little one in the first steps she should take, and the thought embittered my joy. I suppose everybody's baby is the sweetest, and I must forbear and let every mother think how we cared for and tended the little one, and how our heartstrings all vibrated at the touch of her little hand, and if she was ill or worrisome, which she was earthly enough to be, we were all robbed of our comfort till her smiles came back.

Aunt Hildy was an especial favorite, and she would sit with her so contentedly, while that dear old face, illumined by the sun of love, told our hearts it was good for baby's breath to moisten the cheek of age.

Little Halbert, as we called Hal's boy, was as proud of his cousin as could be, and my old apple tree, which was still dear, dropped leaves and blossoms on the heads of the children, who loved to sit beneath its branches.