I carried Miss Lettie’s message to Chloe.  She lifted up those great African orbs of hers as she might have done to the Mountains of the Moon in her native land.

“Now the heavens be praised!” said the honest soul,—­“what for can that icy lady want to see old Chloe?”

I had carried the message under cover of one from my own heart.  I knew that Chloe had lived with my mother until she died.  I knew that she must know something regarding Mary, my sister, to whom, in all my life, I had scarcely given one thought, who died ere I was wise enough to know her.  And so I began by asking,—­

“Am I like my sister who died, Chloe?”

She brought back her eyes from gazing upon the lunar mountains.

“I don’t know’s you are ’xactly; but somehow you did look like her, up-stairs to-day, when you had them white things tied on your head.”

“Were you here when she died?” I asked.

“Oh, yes!”—­old Chloe closed her eyes,—­“it is one of the blessed things Chloe’s Lord will let her ’member, up there;” and Chloe wiped her eyes, in memoriam.

“I don’t remember her,” I said.

“No, how should you? you were wee little then.”

“What made her die, Chloe?”

“I reckon ’t was because the angels wanted her more ’n me, Miss Anna.”

“Was she sick, Chloe?”

“How queer you questions, Miss Anna!  Of course she was sick; she drooped in the August heat; they didn’t think she was very sick; the master gave her some medicine one night, and left her sleeping, quiet as a lamb, and before morning came she went to heaven.”

“Who was the master, Chloe?”

“Why, you is getting stupid-like, child!  Honey darling, don’t you know that Master Percival, your father, was my master ever so many years?”—­and she began notating them upon her fingers.

I interrupted the mathematical calculation by telling Chloe that three people were waiting for their tea.

“Two of ’em is my dear childers,” said Chloe,—­who never would accept Aaron, even with all his goodness, into her heart; and she moved about with accelerated velocity in her daily orbit.

What could Mr. Axtell have meant by saying that he had killed Mary, who, Chloe had assured me, died peaceably in her father’s house?  After disturbing the equilibrium of thought-realm, and nearly giving my mind a new axis of revolution, I decided to think no more of it.  I could not, would not, believe that Abraham Axtell had gone up any Moriah of sacrifice, and been permitted to let fall the knife upon his victim.  His life must have been a dream, an illusion; he only wanted awakening to existence.  And the memory of my Sabbath-morning’s vision dwelt with me, and the voice that speaketh, filling the soul “as a sea-shell is with murmuring,” said, “Your finger will awaken him.”  And I looked down at my two passive hands, and asked, “Which one of them?” And the murmuring voice startled me with the answer, “Two are required,—­one of reconciliation, the other of forgiveness.”  Whereupon I lifted up the ten that Nature gave, and said, “Take them all, if need be.”——­