me, and now I am going away.
Laura will tell you the rest."

Graciella was tearfully indignant.

"It was a shame!" she declared. "Peter was a good old nigger, and it
wouldn't have done anybody any harm to leave him there. I'd rather be
buried beside old Peter than near any of the poor white trash that dug
him up--so there! I'm so sorry you're going away; but I hope,
sometime," she added stoutly, "to see you in New York! Don't forget!"

"I'll send you my address," said the colonel.

_Thirty-eight_

It was a few weeks later. Old Ralph Dudley and Viney had been buried.
Ben Dudley had ridden in from Mink Run, had hitched his horse in the
back yard as usual, and was seated on the top step of the piazza
beside Graciella. His elbows rested on his knees, and his chin upon
his hand. Graciella had unconsciously imitated his drooping attitude.
Both were enshrouded in the deepest gloom, and had been sunk, for
several minutes, in a silence equally profound. Graciella was the
first to speak.

"Well, then," she said with a deep sigh, "there is absolutely nothing
left?"

"Not a thing," he groaned hopelessly, "except my horse and my clothes,
and a few odds and ends which belong to me. Fetters will have the
land--there's not enough to pay the mortgages against it, and I'm in
debt for the funeral expenses."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Gracious knows--I wish I did! I came over to consult the family. I
have no trade, no profession, no land and no money. I can get a job at
braking on the railroad--or may be at clerking in a store. I'd have
asked the colonel for something in the mill--but that chance is gone."

"Gone," echoed Graciella, gloomily. "I see my fate! I shall marry you,
because I can't help loving you, and couldn't live without you; and I
shall never get to New York, but be, all my life, a poor man's wife--a
poor white man's wife."

"No, Graciella, we might be poor, but not poor-white! Our blood will
still be of the best."

"It will be all the same. Blood without money may count for one
generation, but it won't hold out for two."

They relapsed into a gloom so profound, so rayless, that they might
almost be said to have reveled in it. It was lightened, or at least a
diversion was created by Miss Laura's opening the garden gate and
coming up the walk. Ben rose as she approached, and Graciella looked
up.

"I have been to the post-office," said Miss Laura. "Here is a letter
for you, Ben, addressed in