“She’s got a cold in the head,” said old Mrs. Rider.

“Oh, no, my dear!  Whatever I’m thinking about, it’s all this singing, this music.  When I’m thinking of the dear Redeemer, it all turns into this singing and music.  When the clark came to see me, I asked him if he couldn’t cure me, and he said, No,—­it was the Holy Spirit in me, singing to me; and all the time I hear this beautiful music, and it’s the Holy Spirit a-singing to me.”——­

* * * * *

The good man waited for Sophy to speak; but she did not open her lips as yet.

“I hope you are not troubled in mind or body,” he said to her at length, finding she did not speak.

The poor old woman took out a white handkerchief, and lifted it to her black face.  She could not say a word for her tears and sobs.

The minister would have consoled her; he was used to tears, and could in most cases withstand their contagion manfully; but something choked his voice suddenly, and when he called upon it, he got no answer, but a tremulous movement of the muscles, which was worse than silence.

At last she spoke.

“Oh, no, no, no!  It’s my poor girl, my darling, my beauty, my baby, that’s grown up to be a woman; she will come to a bad end; she will do something that will make them kill her or shut her up all her life.  Oh, Doctor, Doctor, save her, pray for her!  It a’n’t her fault.  It a’n’t her fault.  If they knew all that I know, they wouldn’t blame that poor child.  I must tell you, Doctor:  if I should die, perhaps nobody else would tell you.  Massa Venner can’t talk about it.  Doctor Kittredge won’t talk about it.  Nobody but old Sophy to tell you, Doctor; and old Sophy can’t die without telling you.”

The kind minister soothed the poor old soul with those gentle, quieting tones which had carried peace and comfort to so many chambers of sickness and sorrow, to so many hearts overburdened by the trials laid upon them.

Old Sophy became quiet in a few minutes, and proceeded to tell her story.  She told it in the low half-whisper which is the natural voice of lips oppressed with grief and fears; with quick glances around the apartment from time to time, as if she dreaded lest the dim portraits on the walls and the dark folios on the shelves might overhear her words.

It was not one of those conversations which a third person can report minutely, unless by that miracle of clairvoyance known to the readers of stories made out of authors’ brains.  Yet its main character can be imparted in a much briefer space than the old black woman took to give all its details.