The college faculty still sat in the front pews.  There were some of their number, younger men, scholars and men of the world, who had not been free from a disposition to make good-natured fun of Parson Dorrance’s philanthropies.  They shrugged their shoulders sometimes at the mention of his parish at “The Cedars;” they regarded him as old-fashioned and unpractical.  They sat conscience-stricken and abashed now; the tears of these bereaved black people smote their philosophy and their worldliness, and showed them how shallow they were.  Tears answered to tears, and the college professors and the negro slaves wept together.

“They have nobody left to love them now,” exclaimed one of the youngest and hitherto most cynical of Parson Dorrance’s colleagues, as he stood watching the grief-stricken creatures.

While the procession formed to bear the body to the grave, the blacks stood in a group on the church-steps, watching it.  After the last carriage had fallen into line, they hurried down and followed on in the storm.  In vain some kindly persons tried to dissuade them.  It was two miles to the cemetery, two miles farther away from their homes; but they repelled all suggestions of the exposure with indignant looks, and pressed on.  When the coffin was lowered into the grave, they pushed timidly forward, and began to throw in their green boughs and bunches of ferns.  Every one else stepped back respectfully as soon as their intention was discovered, and in a moment they had formed in solid ranks close about the grave, each one casting in his green palm of crown and remembrance,—­a body-guard such as no emperor ever had to stand around him in his grave.

On the day after Mercy’s arrival in town, Stephen had called to see her.  She had sent down to him a note with these words:—­

“I cannot see you, dear Stephen, until after all is over.  The funeral will be to-morrow.  Come the next morning, as early as you like.”

The hours had seemed bitterly long to Stephen.  He had watched Mercy at the funeral; and, when he saw her face bowed in her hands, and felt rather than saw that she was sobbing, he was stung by a new sense of loss and wrong that he had no right to be by her side and comfort her.  He forgot for the time, in the sight of her grief, all the unhappiness of their relation for the past few months.  He had unconsciously felt all along that, if he could but once look in her eyes, all would be well.  How could he help feeling so, when he recalled the expression of childlike trust and devotion which her sweet face always wore when she lifted it to his?  And now, as his eyes dwelt lingeringly and fondly on every line of her bowed form, he had but one thought, but one consciousness,—­his desire to throw his arms about her, and exclaim, “O Mercy, are you not my own, my very own?”