“We will never speak again of this, Lizzy, remember.”  Lizzy was overawed by her tone, and made no reply.

Parson Dorrance’s funeral was a scene which will never be forgotten by those who saw it.  It was on one of the fiercest days which the fierce New England March can show.  A storm of rain and sleet, with occasional softened intervals of snow, raged all day.  The roads were gullies of swift-running water and icy sloughs; the cold was severe; and the cutting wind at times drove the sleet and rain in slanting scourges, before which scarce man or beast could stand.  The funeral was held in the village church, which was larger than the college chapel.  Long before the hour at which the services were to begin, every pew was filled, and the aisles were crowded with those who could not find seats.  From every parish within twenty miles the mourners had come.  There was not one there who had not heard words of help or comfort from Parson Dorrance’s lips.  The students of the college filled the body of the church; the Faculty and distinguished strangers sat in the front pews.  The pews under one of the galleries had been reserved for the negroes from “The Cedars.”  Early in the morning the poor creatures had begun to flock in.  Not a seat was empty:  old women, women with babies, old men, boys and girls, wet, dripping, ragged, friendless, more than one hundred of them,—­there they were.  They had walked all that distance in that terrible storm.  Each one had brought in his hand a green bough or a bunch of rock-ferns, something of green beauty from the woods their teacher had taught them to love.  They sat huddled together, with an expression of piteous grief on every face, which was enough to touch the stoniest heart.  Now and then sobs would burst from the women, and some old figure would be seen rocking to and fro in uncontrollable sorrow.

The coffin stood on a table in front of the pulpit.  It seemed to be resting on an altar of cedar and ferns.  Mercy had brought from her old haunts in the woods masses of the glossy evergreen fern, and interwoven them with the boughs of cedar.  At the end of the services, it was announced that all who wished could pass by the coffin and take one last look at their friend.

Slowly and silently the congregation passed up the right aisle, looked on the face, and passed out at the left door.  It was a pathetic sight to see the poor, outcast band wait patiently, humbly, till every one else had gone:  then, like a flock of stricken sheep, they rushed confusedly towards the pulpit, and gathered round the coffin.  Now burst out the grief which had been pent up:  with cries and ejaculations, they went tottering and stumbling down the aisles.  One old man, with hair as white as snow,—­one of the original fugitive slaves who had founded the settlement,—­bent over the coffin at its head, and clung with both hands to its edge, swaying back and forth above it, crying aloud, till the sexton was obliged to loosen his grasp and lead him away by force.