“Jess ‘Eudora, aged twenty.’  I didn’ know no odder name—­las’ name, I mean.  I was shue ’twan’t Harris.”

“Put the same on the monument,” the Colonel said; “and, Jake, keep the grave up.  She was a good girl.”

“Fo’ de Lawd, I knows dat, an’ I thank’ee, Mas’r, for sayin’ dem words by de grave whar mabby she done har’em; thank’ee.”

The tears were in Jake’s eyes, as he grasped the Colonel’s hand and looked into the face which had relaxed from its sternness, and was quivering in every muscle.  The proud man was moved, and felt that if he were alone he would have knelt in the hot sand by Eudora’s grave, and asked pardon for the wrong he had done her.  But Jake was there, and the child looking on with wide-open eyes, and though she did not understand what was said she knew that Jake was crying, and charged it to the stranger—­“the bad man, to make Shaky cry—­I hates ’oo,” she said, beginning to strike at him.

“Hush! honey, hush!” Jake said, while the Colonel began to feel the need of several hot-water bags as he went back to the house where Mandy Ann, remembering the hospitable ways at Miss Perkins’s when people called, had set out for him the best the house afforded, including the china plate he remembered so well.

He felt that to eat would choke him, but forced himself to take a sip of coffee and a bit of corn bread.  The little girl had remained behind in her play-house, and he was glad of that.  She was a restraint upon him.  He wanted to talk business, and he did not know how much she would understand.  When her great bright eyes were on him he felt nervous as if she were reading his thoughts, and was more himself with her away.  He must talk about her and her going with him on the “Hatty,” and Jake listened with a swelling heart, and Mandy Ann with her apron over her head to hide her tears.  They knew it must be, and tried to suppress their feelings.

“It’s like takin’ my life,” Jake said, “but it’s for de best.  Miss Dory would say so, but, Mas’r Crompton, you’ll fotch her back sometime to de ole place.  You’ll tell her of her mudder, an’ me, an’ Mandy Ann.  You won’t let her done forget.”

Nothing could be further from the Colonel’s intentions than to let the child come back, and everything he could do to make her forget was to be done, but he could not say so to Jake, and with some evasive answer he hurried on to business, and spoke of the house and clearing, which now by right of inheritance belonged to the child.  As he assumed her guardianship he should also assume an oversight of her property, and it was his wish that Jake should stay on the place, receiving a certain sum yearly for his services, and having all he could make besides.  For anything of his own which he had spent on the clearing he was to be repaid, and all the money Eudora had put by was to be his.  Jake felt like a millionaire, and expressed his thanks with choking sobs.  Then, glancing at Mandy Ann, he asked as he had asked before, “An’ what ’bout Mandy Ann?  I ’longs to myself, but who’s she ‘long to, now ole Miss an’ young Miss is dead?”