“‘I would have you without carefulness,’” he answered taking her hand in his.  “They can have no power at all against us except it be given them from above.  My child, God reigns, and if God be for us, who can be against us?”

“Yes, dear papa, and with David let us say, ’In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.’”

Mr. Dinsmore was still with his daughter when Mr. Travilla returned with the news that Uncle Mose’s sufferings were over, and it had been arranged that he and Baby Ben should be buried that evening at dusk.

The children begged to be permitted to attend the double funeral; but their parents judged it best to deny them, fearing an onslaught by the Ku Klux; of which there was certainly a possibility.

“I have been talking with Leland,” Mr. Travilla remarked aside to his friend, “and he proposes that we accompany the procession as a mounted guard.”

“Good!” said Mr. Dinsmore, “Horace and I will join you:  and let us all go armed to the teeth.”

“Certainly, and I accept your offer with thanks.  Some of the boys themselves are pretty fair marksmen but they were all robbed of their arms last night.”

“Let us supply them again, Edward,” exclaimed Elsie, with energy “and have them practice shooting at a mark.”

Her husband assented with a smile.  “You are growing warlike in your feelings,” he said.

“Yes, I believe in the privilege and duty of self-defence.”

Toward evening Mr. Dinsmore rode back to the Oaks, returning to Ion with his son, shortly before the appointed hour for the obsequies.

Elsie saw them and her husband ride away in the direction of the quarter, not without some fluttering of the heart, and with a silent prayer for their safety, retired with her children, to the observatory at the top of the house, from whence a full view might be obtained of the whole route from the cabin of Uncle Mose to the somewhat distant place of sepulture; the spot chosen for that purpose in accommodation to the superstitious feelings of the blacks, which led them to prefer to lay their dead at a distance from their own habitations.

The children watched with deep interest as the procession formed, each man carrying a blazing pine-knot, passed down the one street of the quarter, and wound its slow way along the road that skirted two sides of the plantation, then half way up a little hill, where it gathered in a circle about the open grave.

Twilight was past, thick clouds hid the moon and the torches shone out like stars in the darkness.

“Mamma, what dey doin’ now?” asked Harold.

“Listen! perhaps you may hear something,” she answered, and as they almost held their breath to hear, a wild, sweet negro melody came floating upon the still night air.

“They’re singing,” whispered Vi, “singing Canaan, ’cause Uncle Mose, and little Baby Ben have got safe there.”