always to that far-off, gentle land where life
had been so free from anxiety or care. Of Dixie, of the Potomac, of
old Kentucky, of the "Mississip'," of the land of Tennessee--a score of
songs of exile would flow unconscious from her lips, until at last,
bethinking to herself, she would fall to weeping, covering her face
with her apron and refusing to be comforted by any hand but that of
Mary Ellen, the "young Miss Beecham," whose fortunes she had followed
to the end of the world.

Sometimes at night Mrs. Buford and her niece sang together the songs of
the old South, Mary Ellen furnishing accompaniment with her guitar.
They sang together, here beneath the surface of this sweeping sea of
land, out over which the red eye of their home looked wonderingly. And
sometimes Mary Ellen sang to her guitar alone, too often songs which
carried her back to a morbid, mental state, from which not even the
high voice of this glad, new land could challenge her. Very far away
to her seemed even the graves of Louisburg. Father, mother, brothers,
lover, every kin of earth nearest to her, had not death claimed them
all? What was there left, what was there to be hoped here, cast away
on this sea of land, this country that could never be a land of homes?
Sad doctrine, this, for a young woman in her early twenties, five feet
five, with the peach on her cheek in spite of the burning wind, and
hands that reached out for every little ailing chicken, for every
kitten, or puppy that wanted comforting.

But when the morning came and the sun rose, and the blue sky smiled,
and all the earth seemed to be vibrant with some high-keyed summoning
note--how difficult then it was to be sad! How far away indeed seemed
the once-familiar scenes! How hard it was not to hope, here in this
land of self-reliance and belief! It was the horror of Mary Ellen's
soul that when this sun shone she could not be sad. This land, this
crude, forbidding, fascinating land--what was there about it that swept
her along against her will?

CHAPTER XXI

THE ADVICE OF AUNT LUCY

One day Aunt Lucy, missing Quarterly Meeting, and eke bethinking herself
of some of those aches and pains of body and forebodings of mind with
which the negro is never unprovided, became mournful in her melody, and
went to bed sighing and disconsolate. Mary Ellen heard her voice
uplifted long and urgently, and suspecting the cause, at length went to
her door.

"What is it, Aunt Lucy?"