Before Bergan could answer, there came a low tap at the door. A negro woman, of unusual height, and singularly venerable and dignified¹ aspect, stood, courtesying slightly, on the threshold. She was plainly of great age,—her face was deeply furrowed², and her hair, where it could be seen under the dark blue kerchief that covered her head, was white as snow,—yet her shoulders had not bent³ under the burden of years, her tall frame, though gaunt, was little palsied by the touch of actual infirmity. Although she carried a cane⁴, it was not so much for its support, as for its aid in feeling out her way along her accustomed paths; she had been blind for many years.

"Master Harry⁵," said she, clasping her hands over the head of her cane, and speaking in slow, somewhat tremulous tones, but with neither the slovenly⁷ utterance⁸ nor the vicious pronunciation of the ordinary slave,—"Master Harry, excuse me if I interrupt you, but I could not wait any longer,—I wanted so much to see Miss Eleanor's son!"

"It is Maumer Rue⁹," said Major Bergan, not only with unwonted kindness of tone, but with something akin⁶ to respect in his manner;—"your mother must have spoken to you of our old nurse, Harry?"

"Indeed she has!" exclaimed Bergan, earnestly, starting up to take the blind woman's hand. "Your name has always been a household word with us. The story of your devotion to my mother, in saving her from the flames, at the risk of your own life, and with the ultimate loss of your sight, was the one story of which we children never used to tire. Probably we felt, in our vague, childish way, that it was the one which came from the profoundest depth in her own heart,—since she could never tell it to us without a little

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