“Here is a little souvenir for Eulalia,” said he.

Her eyes moistened as she replied, “I fear it would not be prudent, my son.”

He averted his face as he answered:  “Then give it to her in my mother’s name.  It will be pleasant to me to think that my sister is wearing it.”

* * * * *

A few days after Gerald had sailed for Europe, Mr. King started for New Orleans, taking with him his wife and daughter.  An auctioneer was found, who said he had sold to a gentleman in Natchez a runaway slave named Bob Bruteman, who strongly resembled the likeness of Gerald.  They proceeded to Natchez and had an interview with the purchaser, who recognized a likeness between his slave Bob and the picture of Gerald.  He said he had made a bad bargain of it, for the fellow was intelligent and artful, and had escaped from him two months ago.  In answer to his queries, Mr. King stated that, if Bob was the one he supposed, he was a white man, and had friends who wished to redeem him; but as the master had obtained no clew to the runaway, he could of course give none.  So their long journey produced no result, except the satisfaction of thinking that the object of their interest had escaped from slavery.

It had been their intention to spend the coldest months at the South, but a volcano had flared up all of a sudden at Harper’s Ferry, and boiling lava was rolling all over the land.  Every Northern man who visited the South was eyed suspiciously, as a possible emissary of John Brown; and the fact that Mr. King was seeking to redeem a runaway slave was far from increasing confidence in him.  Finding that silence was unsatisfactory, and that he must either indorse slavery or be liable to perpetual provocations to quarrel, he wrote to Mr. Blumenthal to have their house in readiness for their return; an arrangement which Flora and her children hailed with merry shouts and clapping of hands.

When they arrived, they found their house as warm as June, with Flora and her family there to receive them, backed by a small army of servants, consisting of Tulee, with her tall son and daughter, and little Benny, and Tom and Chloe; all of whom had places provided for them, either in the household or in Mr. King’s commercial establishment.  Their tropical exuberance of welcome made him smile.  When the hearty hand-shakings were over, he said to his wife, as they passed into the parlor, “It really seemed as if we were landing on the coast of Guinea with a cargo of beads.”

“O Alfred,” rejoined she, “I am so grateful to you for employing them all!  You don’t know, and never can know, how I feel toward these dusky friends; for you never had them watch over you, day after day, and night after night, patiently and tenderly leading you up from the valley of the shadow of death.”

He pressed her hand affectionately, and said, “Inasmuch as they did it for you, darling, they did it for me.”