The door opened and Si Johnson came in.  He had just dropped in to see if everything was all right.  He was not to go for a week.

“Let me look at yo’ free papahs,” he said, for Si could read and liked to show off his accomplishment at every opportunity.  He stumbled through the formal document to the end, reading at the last:  “This is a present from Ben to his beloved wife, Viney.”

She held out her hand for the paper.  When Si was gone she sat gazing at it, trying in her ignorance to pick from the, to her, senseless scrawl those last words.  Ben had not raised his head.

Still she sat there, thinking, and without looking her mind began to take in the details of the cabin.  That box of shelves there in the corner Ben had made in the first days they were together.  Yes, and this chair on which she was sitting—­she remembered how they had laughed over its funny shape before he had padded it with cotton and covered it with the piece of linsey “old Mis’” had given him.  The very chest in which her things were packed he had made, and when the last nail was driven he had called it her trunk, and said she should put her finery in it when she went traveling like the white folks.  She was going traveling now, and Ben—­Ben?  There he sat across from her in his chair, bowed and broken, his great shoulders heaving with suppressed grief.

Then, before she knew it, Viney was sobbing, and had crept close to him and put her arms around his neck.  He threw out his arms with a convulsive gesture and gathered her up to his breast, and the tears gushed from his eyes.

When the first storm of weeping had passed Viney rose and went to the fireplace.  She raked forward the coals.

“Ben,” she said, “hit’s been dese pleggoned free papahs.  I want you to see em bu’n.”

“No, no!” he said.  But the papers were already curling, and in a moment they were in a blaze.

“Thaih,” she said, “thaih, now, Viney Raymond!”

Ben gave a great gasp, then sprang forward and took her in his arms and kicked the packed chest into the corner.

And that night singing was heard from Ben’s cabin and the sound of the banjo.

THE FRUITFUL SLEEPING OF THE REV.  ELISHA EDWARDS

There was great commotion in Zion Church, a body of Christian worshippers, usually noted for their harmony.  But for the last six months, trouble had been brewing between the congregation and the pastor.  The Rev. Elisha Edwards had come to them two years before, and he had given good satisfaction as to preaching and pastoral work.  Only one thing had displeased his congregation in him, and that was his tendency to moments of meditative abstraction in the pulpit.  However much fire he might have displayed before a brother minister arose to speak, and however much he might display in the exhortation after the brother was done with the labors of hurling phillipics against the devil, he sat between in the same way, with head bowed and eyes closed.