“That surprises me,” said Lawrence.  “I supposed, from what I had heard of the old woman, that she was perfectly honest.”

“So she is,” said Annie.  “She has been a trusted servant in our family nearly all her life.  But some negroes have very queer ideas about taking certain things, and I suppose Aunt Patsy had some particular reason for taking those shoes, for, of course, they could be of no value to her.”

“I am very sorry,” said Lawrence, “that such sacred relics should have come into my possession, but I must admit that I would not like to give them back to your aunt.”

“Oh, no,” said Annie, “that would never do; and I wouldn’t dare to try to find her box, and put them in it.  It would seem like a desecration for any hand but her own to touch those things.”

“That is true,” said Lawrence, “and you might get yourself into a lot of trouble by endeavoring to repair the mischief.  Before I leave here, we may think of some plan of disposing of the little trotters.  It might be well to give them back to Aunt Patsy and tell her to restore them.”

“I don’t know,” said Miss Annie, with a slowness of reply, and an irrelevance of demeanor, which indicated she was not thinking of the words she was speaking.

The sun was now very near the horizon, and that evening coolness which, in the autumn, comes on so quickly after the sunshine fades out of the air, made Lawrence give a little shrug with his shoulders.  He proposed that they should quicken their pace, and as his companion made no objection, they soon reached the house.

The next day being Sunday, breakfast was rather later than usual, and as Lawrence looked out on the bright morning, with the mists just disengaging themselves from the many-hued foliage which crowned the tops of the surrounding hills; and on the recently risen sun, hanging in an atmosphere of grey and lilac, with the smile of Indian summer on its face; he thought he would like to take a stroll, before that meal; but either the length of his walk on the previous day, or the rapidity of the latter portion of it, had been rather too much for the newly-recovered strength of his ankle, which now felt somewhat stiff and sore.  When he mentioned this at the breakfast table, he received a good deal of condolence from the two ladies, especially Mrs Keswick.  And, at first, it was thought that it might be well for him to give up his proposed attendance at the negro church.  But to this Lawrence strongly objected, for he very much desired to see some of the peculiar religious services of the negroes.  He had been talking on the subject the evening before with Mrs Keswick, who had told him that in this part of the country, which lay in the “black belt” of Virginia, where the negro population had always been thickest, these ceremonies were more characteristic of the religious disposition of the African, than in those sections of the State where the white race exerted a greater influence upon the manners and customs of the colored people.