“You air the woman!  I know you by your favorance to your talk.  I allowed you would look that fair and tender.  Here air the woman, John and Marthy, that restored unto me my sight, and brung me up out of the Valley of the Shadow.  She tolt me what to do, and I follered it, and, lo! the meracle was performed; wonderful things was done unto me!” Here Aunt Dalmanutha—­for it was she—­supplemented the embrace with kisses rained upon the head and brow of the trained nurse.

Extricating herself at last from the strong arms in which she was lifted from the ground and rocked powerfully back and forth, Miss Shippen was able to look once more into the face she had failed to recognize, and from which at least a score of years were now erased.

“Yes, John and Marthy and Evy and t’ other seven young uns, take the look of your life at that ’ere angel messenger that brung me the good tidings of great joy; that lifted me up out of the pit of darkness on to the mountain-tops whar I now sojourn.  Yes, look, for in heaven you ’ll never see no better sight.”

Embarrassed by the open-mouthed family gaze, and by the additional presence of several teachers, who stopped to see and listen, Miss Shippen said: 

“Tell me all about your trip, Aunt Dalmanutha.”

“Tell about it?  Tell that which ten thousand tongues could scarce relate?  God knows my stumbling speech hain’t equal to the occasion; but I ’ll do my best.  You last seed me a-taking my fearsome way to the railroad; and what were the sinking of my heart when John left me thar on the cyar, words will never do jestice to; seemed like I were turnt a-loose in space, rushing I knowed not whither.  The first ground I toch was when I heared the voice of that ’ere doctor you writ to inquiring for me at the far eend.  He said he allowed I would be skeered and lonesome, so he come hisself to fetch me to the hospital.  Woman, it were the deed of a saint, and holp me up wonderful’.  Then I were put to bed a spell, and soft-footed women waited on me.  Then one morning he tolt me he were aiming to peel them ’ere ingun-skins off my eyes, and for me to have no fears, but trust in him; that he believed them eye-nerves, shet back thar in the dark, was still alive and able to do business.  And though my heart shuck like a ager, I laid down on that table same as a soldier.  When I got up, I were blind as ever, with rags tied thick around my eyes.  And I sot there patient day after day, and the doctor he ’d drap in and cheer me up.  ‘Aunt Dally,’ he would say—­he claimed he never had no time to git out the Dalmanuthy—­’in just a leetle while you ’ll be a-trotting around the Blue Grass here worse ‘n a race-hoss; but you got to git your training gradual.’  Then he ’d thin the bandages more and more, till a sort of gray twilight come a-sifting through.  ‘And don’t think,’ he would say, ’that I am aiming to let you lope back to them mountains till I git you plumb made over.  Fust