d the companions
of our school-days, to make us happy. I am here without any of
these--not a relation within a thousand miles; with no one to care for
me or to love me." There was something plaintively melancholly in his
words and tones. He looked at Alice, her eyes were swimming in tears
and she turned away from his gaze.

"You been mity sick, here, young massa, didn't Miss Alice be good to
you? Aunt Ann tell me so. If Miss Alice had not nuss you, you die."
Alice stepped into the cabin taking with her the basket the little
negro had borne, and placing its contents away, came out and handing it
to Rose, bid her run home. "I am coming," she said as she adjusted her
bonnet-strings, "the bugaboos won't catch you."

"Yes, Uncle Toney, I am very grateful to Miss Alice. I shall never
forget her."

How often that word is thoughtlessly spoken? Never to forget, is a long
time to remember. Our lives are a constant change: the present drives
out the past, and one memory usurps the place of another. Yet there are
some memories which are always green. These fasten themselves upon us
in agony. The pleasant are evanescent and pass away as a smile, but the
bitter live in sighs, recurring eternally.

Both were silent, both were thoughtful. "Good-by, Uncle Toney," said
Alice.

"May I join you in your walk home, miss?" There was something in the
tone of this request, which caused Alice to look up into his face and
pause a moment before replying, when she said, very timidly, "If you
please, sir."

The sun was drooping to the horizon and the shadows made giants as thy
grew along the sward. "Farewell, Uncle Toney," said the gentleman,
shaking hands with the old negro. Alice had walked on.

"O! you needn't say farewell so sorry, you'll come back. I sees him.
You'll come back. Eberybody who comes to dis country if he does go way
he's sure to come back, ticlar when he once find putty gall like Miss
Alice, ya! ya!" laughed the old man. "You'll come back. I knows it."

In a few moments he was by the side of Alice. They lounged lazily along
through the beautiful forest a few paces behind Rose, who was too much
afraid of bugaboos to allow herself to get far away from her mistress.
There was a chill in the atmosphere and now and then a fitful gust of
icy wind from the northwest. Winter was coming: these avant-couriers
whispered of it; and overhead, swooped high up in the blue, a host of
whooping cranes, marching in chase of the sun now che