don't you come to the house Sunday evenings any
more?"

"It don't 'pear practical, missie." Jem was given to large-sized
words, when he could get hold of them.

"Mr. Edwards hinders you?"

"Mass' Ed'ards berry smart man, Miss Daisy. He want massa's work done
up all jus' so."

"And he says that the prayer-meeting hinders the work, Jem?"

"Clar, missis, Mass' Ed'ards got long head; he see furder den me," Jem
said, shaking his own head as if the whole thing were beyond him. I
let him go. But a day or two after I attacked Margaret on the subject.
She and Jem, I knew, were particular friends. Margaret was oracular
and mysterious, and looked like a thundercloud. I got nothing from
her, except an increase of uneasiness. I was afraid to go further in
my inquiries; yet could not rest without. The house servants, I knew,
would not be likely to tell me anything that would trouble me if they
could help it. The only exception was mammy Theresa; who with all her
love for me had either less tact, or had grown from long habit
hardened to the state of things in which she had been brought up. From
her, by a little cross questioning, I learned that Jem and others had
been forbidden to come to the Sunday readings; and their disobeying
had been visited with the lash, not once nor twice; till, as mammy
Theresa said, "'peared like it warn't no use to try to be good agin de
devil."

And papa was away on his voyage to China--away on the high seas, where
no letter could reach him; and Mr. Edwards knew that. There was a fire
in my heart now that burned with sharp pain. I felt as if it would
burn my heart out. And now took shape and form one single aim and
purpose, which became for years the foremost one of my life. It had
been growing and gathering. I set it clear before me from this time.

Meanwhile, my mother's daughter was not willing to be entirely baffled
by the overseer. I arranged with Darry that I would be at the
cemetery-hill on all pleasant Sunday afternoons, and that all who
wished to hear me read, or who wished to learn themselves, might meet
me there. The Sunday afternoons were often pleasant that winter. I was
constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the
quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I
sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the
place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there
was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the