“’Oh, it will be joyful
      When we meet to part no more.’

“It was ludicrous, but very sad, and Jake’s efforts to keep order were pitiful.  He called his young mistress Miss Dory, and was most anxious to screen her from the least suspicion of wrong.  When I questioned him with regard to the parentage of the little girl, he wrung his hands and answered, ‘I do’ know for shu’, but fo’ God it’s all right.  She tole me so, fo’ she died, an’ Miss Dory never tole a lie.  She said to find Elder Covil, who knew, but he’s done gone off Norf, or somewhar.’

“I felt sure it was all right when I saw the girl’s face.  It must have been beautiful in life, and no taint of guilt had ever marred its innocence.  There could have been no fault at her door, except concealment, and the reason for that was buried in her grave.  I heard of a stranger who visited the clearing three or four years before the funeral.  Jake was away, but Mandy Ann was there and full of the ‘gemman,’ who, I have no doubt, was the girl’s husband and a great scamp.  I left Florida within a week after that funeral, and have never been here since, until I came to take charge for a time of the church which has been erected here.  I should never have known the place, it has changed so since the close of the war and the influx of visitors from the North.  The hotel, which has been greatly improved and enlarged, is always full in the season, and it is one of the most popular winter resorts on the river.

“One of my first inquiries was for the negroes Jake and Mandy Ann.  The latter is married and lives near the hotel, with as many children, I thought, as the old woman who lived in a shoe, the way they swarmed out when I called to see their mother.  She had gone to Jacksonville to see ‘ole Miss Perkinses, who was dyin’, and had sent for her ’case she done live with her when she was a girl,’ one of the pickaninnies said.  When I asked for Jake I was told he was still in the palmetto clearing.  No one could tell me anything about the little girl who must now, if living, be a woman of nearly forty.  Indeed, no one seemed to remember her, so changed are the people since the war.  Jake, I was sure, had not forgotten, and a few days ago I went to see him.  He is an old man now, and if there is such a thing as an aristocratic negro, he is one; with his face black as ebony, his hair white as snow, and his eyes full of intelligence and fire, especially when he talks of Miss Dory and ’de good ole times fo’ she went to Georgy and met de Northern cuss.’  That is what he calls the man who came for the little girl after the old grandmother died.

“I will tell you the story of his coming as Jake told it to me in the little enclosure where Miss Dory is buried, and where there is a very pretty monument to her memory, with ‘Eudora, aged 20,’ upon it.  He was working in the yard, which was a garden of bloom, and over the grave and around the monument a Marshal Niel had twined itself, its clusters of roses filling the air with perfume.  Pushing them a little aside, so that I could see the lettering more distinctly, he said, ’That’s what he tole me to put thar, jess “Eudora, aged 20.”  I’ve left room for another name when I’m perfectly shu’.  I don’t want to put no lie on a grave stun, if her name wan’t Crompton.’