"Des wait
twel we pass de aspens, Marse Dan, des wait twel we pass de aspens, den
we'll be right dar, suh."
Then, as Dan reached him, the aspens were passed, and where Chericoke had
stood they found a heap of ashes.
At their feet lay the relics of a hot skirmish, and the old elms were
perforated with rifle balls, but for these things Dan had neither eyes nor
thoughts. He was standing before the place that he called home, and where
the hospitable doors had opened he found only a cold mound of charred and
crumbled bricks.
For an instant the scene went black before his eyes, and as he staggered
forward, Big Abel caught his arm.
"I'se hyer, Marse Dan, I'se hyer," groaned the negro in his ear.
"But the others? Where are the others?" asked Dan, coming to himself. "Hold
me, Big Abel, I'm an utter fool. O Congo! Is that Congo?"
A negro, coming with his hoe from the corn field, ran over the desolated
lawn, and began shouting hoarsely to the hands behind him:--
"Hi! Hit's Marse Dan, hit's Marse Dan come back agin!" he yelled, and at
the cry there flocked round him a little troop of faithful servants,
weeping, shouting, holding out eager arms.
"Hi! hit's Marse Dan!" they shrieked in chorus. "Hit's Marse Dan en Brer
Abel! Brer Abel en Marse Dan is done come agin!"
Dan wept with them--tears of weakness, of anguish, of faint hope amid the
dark. As their hands closed over his, he grasped them as if his eyes had
gone suddenly blind.
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