referred the freedom of the neighboring woods and the
pleasure of digging in the dirt to all the white robes and crowns that
might be laid up somewhere in the skies.

But when George had finished reading, John Jay was not gazing into the
clouds for a glimpse of the city to which his friend was going; he was
looking down the road. Crowned with all their autumn glory, the far
hills stood up fair and golden in the westering sun. It was to some
place just as real and beautiful as the hills he looked upon that George
was going, not a crowded street with an endless procession of singing,
white-robed figures. A far country, under whose waving trees health and
strength would be given back to him. No, dying was not a cold, ugly
thing.

"_They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee
away!_"

George closed the book, and leaning wearily back in the chair, drew his
hand over his eyes. "I want you to promise me one thing, John Jay," he
said. "That when I am gone you will think of what I am telling you now,
and when the colored people all gather around to see this tired body of
mine laid aside, you'll remember Dr. Leonard's coat, and you'll say,
'George has left his behind too. He isn't here, but he's just on the
other side of the toll-gate.' Will you do that, John Jay?"

There was a frightened look in the boy's eyes. He had no words
wherewith to answer him, but he nodded an assent as he went on nervously
tossing the acorns from one hand to another.

There was a long silence, and when he looked up inquiringly, George had
put his thin hands over his face to hide the tears that were slowly
trickling down.

"What's the mattah?" he asked anxiously. "Shall I call Mars' Nat?"

"No," answered the man, steadying his voice. "I was only thinking that I
had expected to go through the gate, when my turn came, with my arms
piled full of sheaves,--but I've come to the end too soon. It seems so
hard to come down to death empty-handed, when I have longed all these
years to do so much for my people. Oh, my poor people!" he cried out
desperately; "so helpless and so needy, and my life that was to have
been given to them going out in vain! utterly in vain!"

It was not the first time that John Jay had heard that cry. In these
weeks of constant companionship George had talked so much of his hopes
and plans, that a faint spark of that same ambition had begun to
smoulder slowly in the boy's ignorant little heart. Six month