The Cabin by the Live Oak, Chapters V-IX [pp. 267-277]

The Cabin by the Livze Oak.
"Not that I know of. Put the foolish
fellow ran away, and we never saw him
afterwards."
"Nor heard of him?"
"Yes, I may say we heard of him.
Some man wrote back to a law firm
wanting to buy him. Papa got the man's
name and wrote to him once, but after
a while the letter came back from the
dead letter office."
"Well, Miss Sawyer, I am the one
who wrote the letter, and I wrote it at
Abe's own request."
It was now the lady's turn to be surprised, and she certainly looked so.
"And so you saw poor Abe?"
"Saw him and talked with him twice.
He told me of his being a slave, and of
the attempt made to take him back to
slavery, which you warned him against.
He ran away, fearing that your father
might get into trouble with your uncle
about him. He claimed to me that he
had dug out large sums of gold, which I
was to use to buy his freedom and that
of a girl he wanted to marry, but I
thought his mind wandering, and had
very little faith in that part of his story."
"Do you mean that part about the
colored girl?"
"No, no. About the large sums of gold.
The mines where we were were paying
so poorly that his success looked impossible to me. But Abe's story of the girl
I believed."
"Strange things happen in this world,
\Ir. Sheldon," said she, leaning towards
me. "That very girl, Julia, is a trusted domestic in my mother's family,
now.
"You astonish me."
"I do not doubt it. Julia, you know,
was sold to a Mississippi man, but escaped from him. She got with friends
in the North, who not only gave her a
home, but set inquiries on foot to learn
Abe's whereabouts. Finally, they wrote
to father, who answered, telling them
what he knew, and after the emancipation Julia came out here."
"It is a pity that her devotion to her
lover should not be rewarded. But if
nothing has been heard from Abe in all
these years, now that more than four
years have passed since slavery was abolished, it is most probable that the poor
fellow is dead."
"I am afraid it is, Mr. Sheldon. It is
a happiness, though, to think that such
a thing can never happen again." The
tears came to her eyes.
"You do not speak like a Southerner,
Miss Sawyer."
"But I do, Mr. Sheldon, and like a
true Southerner. You people of the
North may xvell feel proud of the share
you bore in ridding our country of its
great curse, but you cannot feel the
pride that I do now that my own beautiful State is no longer stained with
slavery,- that we can hold up our heads
with the proudest of you. And yet,"
she added, gravely, "I fear sometimes
that the victors in the unequal contest
are not using their power wisely."
"In what way?"
"In giving the elective franchise to
the poor souls who can have no knowledge of the value of the gift. Freedom
is a right; citizenship is a privilege that
should be given only to intelligence and
worth."
"I am afraid you are right, Miss Sawyer," I said thoughtfully. "But we have
become so interested in our subject that
we have forgotten our companions altogether."
"I think you have," said Jasper, who
noticed my last remark. "The evening
has slipped away. Do you know what
time it is?"
I pulled out my watch.' Vell, well,
I think we do owe these folks an apology, Miss Sawyer. But, Jasper, I have
found out that this lady's father was an
acquaintance of mine long before your
father and I ever saw each other."
"We will have to excuse you then, if
that be the case."
As the hour was really much later
276
[Sept.