As usual she was very loquacious, scarcely allowing him a word, and ringing changes on her own and Eloise’s sprained ankle, until he began to fear he should have no chance to broach the object of his visit without seeming to drag it in.  The chance came on the return of the Crompton carriage, with the Colonel sitting stiff and straight and Amy drooping under her veil beside him.  Here was his opportunity, and the rector seized it, and soon learned nearly all Mrs. Biggs knew of Amy’s arrival at Crompton House and the surmises concerning her antecedents.

“She’s a Crompton if there ever was one, and why the Colonel should keep so close a mouth all these years beats me,” was Mrs. Biggs’s closing remark, as she bowed the rector out and went back to Eloise, who felt that she was getting very familiar with the Crompton history, so far as Mrs. Biggs knew it.

CHAPTER IX

LETTER FROM REV.  CHARLES MASON

“Enterprise, Fla., Sept. —­, 18—.

“My dear Arthur: 

“I was glad to hear that you were so pleasantly situated and liked your parish work.  I trust it is cooler there than here in Florida, where the thermometer has registered higher day after day than it has before in years.  I rather like it, however, as I am something of a salamander, and this, you know, is not my first experience in Florida.  I was here between thirty and forty years ago, before I was married.  In fact, I met your mother here at the Brock House, which before the war was frequented by many Southerners, some of whom came in the summer as well as in the winter.

“It was while I was here that an incident occurred which made a strong impression upon my mind, and was recalled to it by your mention of Crompton as the town where you are living.  On one of the hottest days of the season I attended a funeral, the saddest, and, in some respects, the most peculiar I ever attended.  It was in a log-house some miles from the river, and was that of a young girl, who lay in her coffin with a pathetic look on her face, as if in death she were pleading for some wrong to be righted.  I could scarcely keep back my tears when I looked at her, and after all these years my eyes grow moist when I recall that funeral in the palmetto clearing, with only Crackers and negroes in attendance, a demented old woman, a dark-eyed little girl, the only relatives, and a free negro, Jake, and Mandy Ann, a slave, belonging to Mrs. Harris, the only real mourners.  Mandy Ann attended to the child and old woman, while Jake was master of ceremonies, and more intelligent than many white people I have met.  Such a funeral as that was, with the cries and groans and singing of both whites and blacks!  One old woman, called Judy, came near having the power, as they call a kind of fit of spiritual exaltation.  But Jake shook her up, and told her to behave, as it was a ‘Piscopal funeral and not a pra’r meetin’.  Mandy Ann also shook up the old lady, Mrs. Harris, and screamed in her ear through a trumpet, while the little dark-eyed child joined in the refrain of the negroes’ song,