ll, I fear, be an attack upon him."

"Then upon you and Edward!" she said, her cheek growing very pale, and
her eyes filling. "Papa I am becoming very anxious."

"'I would have you without carefulness,'" he answered taking her hand in
his. "They can have no power at all against us except it be given them
from above. My child, God reigns, and if God be for us, who can be
against us?"

"Yes, dear papa, and with David let us say, 'In the shadow of thy wings
will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.'"

Mr. Dinsmore was still with his daughter when Mr. Travilla returned with
the news that Uncle Mose's sufferings were over, and it had been
arranged that he and Baby Ben should be buried that evening at dusk.

The children begged to be permitted to attend the double funeral; but
their parents judged it best to deny them, fearing an onslaught by the
Ku Klux; of which there was certainly a possibility.

"I have been talking with Leland," Mr. Travilla remarked aside to his
friend, "and he proposes that we accompany the procession as a mounted
guard."

"Good!" said Mr. Dinsmore, "Horace and I will join you: and let us all
go armed to the teeth."

"Certainly, and I accept your offer with thanks. Some of the boys
themselves are pretty fair marksmen but they were all robbed of their
arms last night."

"Let us supply them again, Edward," exclaimed Elsie, with energy "and
have them practice shooting at a mark."

Her husband assented with a smile. "You are growing warlike in your
feelings," he said.

"Yes, I believe in the privilege and duty of self-defence."

Toward evening Mr. Dinsmore rode back to the Oaks, returning to Ion with
his son, shortly before the appointed hour for the obsequies.

Elsie saw them and her husband ride away in the direction of the
quarter, not without some fluttering of the heart, and with a silent
prayer for their safety, retired with her children, to the observatory
at the top of the house, from whence a full view might be obtained of
the whole route from the cabin of Uncle Mose to the somewhat distant
place of sepulture; the spot chosen for that purpose in accommodation to
the superstitious feelings of the blacks, which led them to prefer to
lay their dead at a distance from their own habitations.

The children watched with deep interest as the procession formed, each
man carrying a blazing pine-knot, passed down the one street of the
quarter, and wound its slow way along th