iss Lettie, shook
hands genially with Aaron, looked at me, and we were gone.

I carried Miss Lettie's message to Chloe. She lifted up those great
African orbs of hers as she might have done to the Mountains of the Moon
in her native land.

"Now the heavens be praised!" said the honest soul,--"what for can that
icy lady want to see old Chloe?"

I had carried the message under cover of one from my own heart. I knew
that Chloe had lived with my mother until she died. I knew that she must
know something regarding Mary, my sister, to whom, in all my life, I had
scarcely given one thought, who died ere I was wise enough to know her.
And so I began by asking,--

"Am I like my sister who died, Chloe?"

She brought back her eyes from gazing upon the lunar mountains.

"I don't know's you are 'xactly; but somehow you _did_ look like her,
up-stairs to-day, when you had them white things tied on your head."

"Were you here when she died?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!"--old Chloe closed her eyes,--"it is one of the blessed things
Chloe's Lord will let her 'member, up there;" and Chloe wiped her eyes,
_in memoriam_.

"I don't remember her," I said.

"No, how should you? you were wee little then."

"What made her die, Chloe?"

"I reckon 't was because the angels wanted her more 'n me, Miss Anna."

"Was she sick, Chloe?"

"How queer you questions, Miss Anna! Of course she was sick; she drooped
in the August heat; they didn't think she was very sick; the master gave
her some medicine one night, and left her sleeping, quiet as a lamb, and
before morning came she went to heaven."

"Who was the master, Chloe?"

"Why, you _is_ getting stupid-like, child! Honey darling, don't you
know that Master Percival, your father, was my master ever so many
years?"--and she began notating them upon her fingers.

I interrupted the mathematical calculation by telling Chloe that three
people were waiting for their tea.

"Two of 'em is my dear childers," said Chloe,--who never would accept
Aaron, even with all his goodness, into her heart; and she moved about
with accelerated velocity in her daily orbit.

What could Mr. Axtell have meant by saying that he had killed Mary,
who, Chloe had assured me, died peaceably in her father's house? After
disturbing the equilibrium of thought-realm, and nearly giving my mind a
new axis of revolution, I decided to think no more of it. I could
not, would not, believe that Abraham Axtell had gone up any Moriah