in time cooperated with her efforts, but
any one who had watched the current of events must have been compelled
to admit that the very fair progress of the colored people of Patesville
in the fifteen years following emancipation had been due chiefly to the
unselfish labors of Henrietta Noble, and that her nature did not belie
her name.

Fifteen years is a long time. Miss Noble had never met Captain Carey;
and when she learned later that he had married a Southern girl in the
neighborhood of his post, she had shed her tears in secret and banished
his image from her heart. She had lived a lonely life. The white people
of the town, though they learned in time to respect her and to value her
work, had never recognized her existence by more than the mere external
courtesy shown by any community to one who lives in the midst of it. The
situation was at first, of course, so strained that she did not expect
sympathy from the white people; and later, when time had smoothed over
some of the asperities of war, her work had so engaged her that she had
not had time to pine over her social exclusion. Once or twice nature had
asserted itself, and she had longed for her own kind, and had visited
her New England home. But her circle of friends was broken up, and she
did not find much pleasure in boarding-house life; and on her last visit
to the North but one, she had felt so lonely that she had longed for the
dark faces of her pupils, and had welcomed with pleasure the hour when
her task should be resumed.

But for several reasons the school at Patesville was of more importance
to Miss Noble at this particular time than it ever had been before.
During the last few years her health had not been good. An affection
of the heart similar to that from which her mother had died, while not
interfering perceptibly with her work, had grown from bad to worse,
aggravated by close application to her duties, until it had caused her
grave alarm. She did not have perfect confidence in the skill of the
Patesville physicians, and to obtain the best medical advice had gone to
New York during the summer, remaining there a month under the treatment
of an eminent specialist. This, of course, had been expensive and had
absorbed the savings of years from a small salary; and when the time
came for her to return to Patesville, she was reduced, after paying her
traveling expenses, to her last ten-dollar note.

"It is very fortunate," the great man had said at h