ress on the good woman the superiority of the position from which she
had fallen, and the grandeur of the family that had formerly owned her,
always adding that "Massa Love wouldn't a let her kem to sech a pass ef
he had kep' his mind."

Mrs. Peters, with the kindest heart and warmest sympathies in the world,
listened patiently to black mammy's tales, till the loquacious old
negress at last confided to her the whole story of her young master's
blighted love dream, down to the moment when Franklin had brought Dainty
Chase to the station, bought her ticket, and sent her on to her mother
in Richmond.

Then the interested Mrs. Peters also had a story to tell, for she had
recognized in the heroine of the story the lovely patient she had tended
so faithfully, last fall, at the logging camp in the woods.

"And I believe she told the truth to that wicked woman, that she was
secretly married to Mr. Ellsworth," she affirmed. "For, Virginny, I'll
tell you a secret that hain't never passed my lips before, not even to
Peters, and I don't often keep secrets from my good old man. But this is
it: I more nor suspected that that pore young chile was in a way to
become a mother."

"Lord, have mercy!" ejaculated black mammy, and the tears rolled down
her fat, black cheeks.

After that the two women could talk of little else but sweet Dainty and
her sorrowful plight--an unacknowledged wife soon to be a mother.

They counted up the months on their fingers, and found that the
important event was almost at hand--must happen within the next two
weeks--and mammy exclaimed:

"I see it all plain as daylight now! Massa Love was 'fraid sumpin' would
happen to 'vent de marriage, so he took his sweetheart off on de sly,
an' dey got married; den he sent me home an' fix up dat room nex' to his
own fer his bride, so 'at he kin tek keer ob her ebery night--dat's it.
An' den dey bofe feel so easy in dey min's, little finkin' what turrible
fings gwine happen on de birfday. Oh! ain't it de awfules' 'fliction you
ebber hear on, Mis' Peters? Dat pore man wif de bullet in his haid, an'
his senses gone, an' dat pore wife druv away in poverty, an' dem
wretches rollin' in gold dat belongs to Massa Love an' his sweet bride!
An' to fink dat I is cheated, too, out o' a hunnerd dollars! fer I done
match dat torn piece ob torchon lace to Sheila Kelly's night gownd long
ago, an' ef Massa Love was in his senses, I could claim dat big
reward."

That night, the l