at the supper-table on the following evening i became convinced of something which i had felt coming for two or three days, wondering the while whether sidney did not feel the same thing. when we rose aunt drew me aside and with caressing touches on my brow and temples said she was sorry to be so slow in bringing me into social contact with the young people of the neighboring plantations, but that uncle, on his arrival at home, had found a letter whose information had kept him, and her as well, busy every waking hour since. "and this evening," she continued, "we can't even sit down with you around the parlor lamp. can you amuse yourself alone, dear, or with sidney, while your uncle and i go over some pressing matters together?"
surely i could. "auntie, was the information--bad news?"
"it wasn't good, my dear; i may tell you about it to-morrow."
"hadn't i better go back to father at once?"
"oh, my child, not for our sake; if you're not too lonesome we'd rather keep you. let me see; has mingo ever danced for you? why, tell sidney to make mingo come dance for you."
mingo came; his leaps, turns, postures, steps, and outcries were a most laughable wonder, and i should have begged for more than i did, but i saw that it was a part of sidney's religion to disapprove the dance.
"sidney," i said, "did you ever hear of the great clock in the sky? yes, there's one there; it's made all of stars." we were at the foot of some veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and mingo were about to settle down at my feet i said if they would follow me to the top of the flight i would tell this marvel: what the learned believed those eternal lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths of the night, others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few never sank out of sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet went round and round with all the others; and why i called those the clock of heaven; which gained, each night, four minutes, and only four, on the time we kept by the sun.
"pra-aise gawd!" murmured sidney. "miss maud, please hol' on tell mingo run' fetch daddy an' mammy; dey don't want dat sto'y f'om me secon' haynded!" mingo darted off and we waited. "miss maud, what de white folks mean by de nawth stah? is dey sich a stah as de nawth stah?"
i tried to explain that since all this seeming movement of the stars around us was but our own daily and yearly turning, there would necessarily be two opposite points on our earth which would never move at all, and that any star directly in line with those two points would seem as still as they.
"like de p'int o' de spin'le on de spinnin'-wheel, miss maud? oh, yass, i b'lieve i un'stand dat; i un'stan' it some."
i showed her the north star, and told her how to find it; and then i took from my watch-guard a tiny compass and let her see how it forever picked out from among all the stars of heaven that one small light, and held quiveringly to it. she hung over it with ecstatic sighs. "do it see de stah, miss maud, like de wise men o' de eas' see de stah o' jesus?"
i tried to make plain the law it was obeying.
"and do it p'int dah dess de same in de broad day, an' all day long?--pra-aise gawd! and do it p'int dah in de rain, an' in de stawmy win' a-fulfillin' of his word, when de ain't a single stah admissible in de ske-eye?--de lawd's na-ame be pra-aise'!" her father, mother, and brother were all looking at it with her, now, and she glanced from one to another with long heavings of rapture.
"miss maud," said silas, in a subdued voice, "dat little trick mus' 'a' cos' you a mint o' money."
"silas," put in hester, "you know dass not a pullite question!" but she was ravening for its answer, and i said i had bought it for twenty-five cents. they laughed with delight. yet, when i told sidney she might have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lips seemed to drop unconsciously while she gazed on the trinket.
they all sat down on the steps nearest below me, and presently, beginning where i had begun with sidney, i went on to point out the polar constellations and to relate the age-worn story of cepheus and cassiopeia, andromeda and the divine perseus.
"lawd, my lawd !" whispered the mother, "was dey--was dey colo'd?"
i said two of them were king and queen of ethiopia, and a third was their daughter.
"chain' to de rock, an' yit sa-ave at las'!" exclaimed sidney.
while her husband and children still gazed at the royal stars, hester spoke softly to me again. "miss maud, dass a tryin' sawt o' sto'y to tell to a bunch o' po' niggehs; did you dess make dat up--fo' us?"
"why, hester," i said, "that was an old, old story before this country was ever known to white folks, or black," and the eyes of all four were on me as the daughter asked: "ain't it in de bi-ible?"
as all but sidney bade me good night, i heard her say; "i don' care, i b'lieb dat be'n in de bible an' git drap out by mista-ake!"
in my room she grew queerly playful, and continued so until she had drawn off my shoes and stockings. but then abruptly, she took my feet in her slim black hands, and with eyes lifted tenderly to mine, said: "how bu'ful 'pon de mountain is dem wha' funnish good tidin's!" she leaned her forehead on my insteps: "us bleeged to paht some day, miss maud."
i made a poor effort to lift her, but she would not be displaced. "cayn't no two people count fo' sho' on stayin' togetheh al'ays in dis va-ain worl'," and all at once i found my face in my hands and the salt drops searching through my fingers; sidney was kissing my feet and wetting them with her tears.
at close of the next day, a sabbath, my uncle and aunt called all their servants around the front steps of the house and with tears more bitter than any of sidney's or mine, told them that by the folly of others, far away, they had lost their whole fortune at one stroke and must part with everything, and with them, by sale. their dark hearers wept with them, and silas, hester, and sidney, after the rest had gone back to the quarters, offered the master and mistress, through many a quaintly misquoted scripture, the consolations of faith.
"i wish we had set you free, silas," said uncle, "you and yours, when we could have done it. your mistress and i are going to town to-morrow solely to get somebody to buy you, all four, together."
"mawse ben," cried the slave, with strange earnestness, "don't you do dat! don't you was'e no time dat a-way! you go see what you can sa-ave fo' you-all an' yone!"
"for the creditors, you mean, silas," said my aunt; "that's done."
hester had a question. "do it all go to de credito's anyhow, miss 'liza, no matteh how much us bring?" and when aunt said yes, sidney murmured to her mother, "i tol' you dat." i wondered when she had told her.
uncle and aunt tried hard to find one buyer for the four, but failed; nobody who wanted the other three had any use for mingo. it was after nightfall when they came dragging home. "now don't you fret one bit 'bout dat, mawse ben," exclaimed sidney, with a happy heroism in her eyes that i remembered afterward. "'de lawd is perwide!'"
"strange," said my aunt to uncle and me aside, smiling in pity, "how slight an impression disaster makes on their minds!" and that too i remembered afterward.
as soon as we were alone in my chamber, sidney and i, she asked me to tell her again of the clock in the sky, and at the end of her service and of my recital she drew me to my window and showed me how promptly she could point out the pole-star at the centre of the clock's vast dial, although at our right a big moon was leaving the tree tops and flooding the sky with its light. toward this she turned, and lifting an arm with the reverence of a priestess said, in impassioned monotone:
"'de moon shine full at his comman'
an' all de stahs obey.'"
she kissed my hand as she added good-by. "why, sidney!" i laughed, "you mean good night, don't you?"
she bent low, tittered softly, and then, with a swift return to her beautiful straightness, said: "but still, miss maud, who eveh know when dey say good night dat it ain't good-by?" she fondled my hand between her two as she backed away, kissed it fervently again, and was gone.
when i awoke my aunt stood in broad though sunless daylight at the bedside, with the waking cup of coffee which it was sidney's wont to bring. i started from the pillow. "oh! what--who--wh'--where's sidney? why--how long has it been raining?"
"it began at break of day," she replied, adding pensively, "thank god."
"oh! were we in such bad need of rain?"
"they were--precisely when it came. rain never came straighter from heaven."
"they?"--i stared.
"yes; silas and hester--and sidney--and mingo. they must have started soon after moonrise, and had the whole bright night, with its black shadows, for going."
"for going where, auntie; going where?"
"then the rain came in god's own hour," she continued, as if wholly to herself, "and washed out their trail."
i sprang from the bed. "aunt 'liza!"
"yes, maud, they've run away, and if only they may get away. god be praised!"
of course, i cried like an infant. i threw myself upon her bosom. "oh, auntie, auntie, i'm afraid it's my fault! but when i tell you how far i was from meaning it----"
"don't tell me a word, my child; i wish it were my fault; i'd like to be in your shoes. and, i don't care how right slavery is, i'll never own a darky again!"
one day some two months after, at home again with father. just as i was leaving the house on some errand, sidney--ragged, wet, and bedraggled as a lost dog--sprang into my arms. when i had got her reclothed and fed i eagerly heard her story. three of the four had come safely through; poor mingo had failed; if i ever tell of him it must be at some other time. in the course of her tale i asked about the compass.
"dat little trick?" she said fondly. "oh, yass'm, it wah de salvation o' de lawd 'pon cloudy nights; but time an' ag'in us had to sepa'ate, 'llowin' fo' to rejine togetheh on de bank o' de nex' creek, an' which, de lawd a-he'pin' of us, h-it al'ays come to pass; an' so, afteh all, miss maud, de one thing what stan' us de bes' frien' night 'pon night, next to gawd hisse'f, dat wah his clock in de ske-eye."
