and my reward will be found
in the great joy and comfort you will bring to your father in his old
age."

"This is too much," said John.

"Not enough," said Louis, and at Aunt Peg's vine-covered lattice 'neath
which he stood, we said good-night and turned toward home, while in our
hearts lay mirrored, another fadeless picture.

CHAPTER XXI.

JOHN JONES.

How the days of this year flew past us, we were borne along swiftly on
their wings, and every week was filled to overflowing with pleasant care
and work. John was called in the South after his master's name, but now
he said, inasmuch as he had left him and the old home in Newbern, it
would seem better to him to be called by his father's name, and so he
took his place among us as John Jones. He went to work with a will,
became a great friend to Ben and helped him wonderfully, for between the
saw-mill, the farm with its stock-raising and broom trade, which really
was getting to be a good business, Ben was more than busy.

John was a mechanic naturally; he was clever at most anything he put his
mind on, "and never tried to get shet of work;" and his daily work
proved his worth among us. Matthias worked and sang the long days
through, and all was bright and beautiful before him. He tried to think
John's angel mother could look down from "hevin" on him, and it gave him
pleasure to feel so.

When the fall came John said to Louis:

"I want to know something. I promised the boys and gals that when I got
free I'd speak a few words for them, and I must learn something."

So he came regularly to Louis through the winter evenings, and in a
little time he could send a readable letter to the friends down South.
Newbern was a nice place, had nice people, he told us, and he had been
well treated and permitted to learn to read, but the writing he could
not find time to master; he was skilful in figures, and Louis was very
proud of his rapid improvement.

In our meetings he gradually came to feel at home, and at last surprised
us one evening by a recital of his life, and an earnest appeal to
Christians to forget not those who looked to the star in the North as to
a light that promised them freedom and the comforts of a home. His
large, expressive eyes grew luminous with feeling, and as he stood, rapt
in his own thought, which carried him back to the old home, he seemed
like a tower of strength in our midst, and when at the close of the
meeting, as we walked behind the