here was not one there who had not
heard words of help or comfort from Parson Dorrance's lips. The students
of the college filled the body of the church; the Faculty and
distinguished strangers sat in the front pews. The pews under one of the
galleries had been reserved for the negroes from "The Cedars." Early in
the morning the poor creatures had begun to flock in. Not a seat was
empty: old women, women with babies, old men, boys and girls, wet,
dripping, ragged, friendless, more than one hundred of them,--there they
were. They had walked all that distance in that terrible storm. Each one
had brought in his hand a green bough or a bunch of rock-ferns, something
of green beauty from the woods their teacher had taught them to love. They
sat huddled together, with an expression of piteous grief on every face,
which was enough to touch the stoniest heart. Now and then sobs would
burst from the women, and some old figure would be seen rocking to and fro
in uncontrollable sorrow.

The coffin stood on a table in front of the pulpit. It seemed to be
resting on an altar of cedar and ferns. Mercy had brought from her old
haunts in the woods masses of the glossy evergreen fern, and interwoven
them with the boughs of cedar. At the end of the services, it was
announced that all who wished could pass by the coffin and take one last
look at their friend.

Slowly and silently the congregation passed up the right aisle, looked on
the face, and passed out at the left door. It was a pathetic sight to see
the poor, outcast band wait patiently, humbly, till every one else had
gone: then, like a flock of stricken sheep, they rushed confusedly towards
the pulpit, and gathered round the coffin. Now burst out the grief which
had been pent up: with cries and ejaculations, they went tottering and
stumbling down the aisles. One old man, with hair as white as snow,--one
of the original fugitive slaves who had founded the settlement,--bent over
the coffin at its head, and clung with both hands to its edge, swaying
back and forth above it, crying aloud, till the sexton was obliged to
loosen his grasp and lead him away by force.

The college faculty still sat in the front pews. There were some of their
number, younger men, scholars and men of the world, who had not been free
from a disposition to make good-natured fun of Parson Dorrance's
philanthropies. They shrugged their shoulders sometimes at the mention of
his parish at "The Cedars;" they rega