What a strange fate was theirs!  Two brothers—­the one the owner of three hundred slaves, and the first man of his district—­the other, a bonded menial, and so poor that the very bread he ate, the clothes he wore, were another’s!  How terribly on him had fallen the curse pronounced on his race!

I passed the remainder of the afternoon in my room, and did not again meet my host until the family assembled at the tea-table.  Jim then occupied his accustomed seat behind the Colonel’s chair, and my host was in more than his usual spirits, though Madam P——­, I thought, wore a sad and absent look.

The conversation rambled over a wide range of subjects, and was carried on mainly by the Colonel and myself; but toward the close of the meal the lady said to me: 

’Mr. K——­, Sam and young Junius are to be buried this evening.  If you have never seen a negro funeral, perhaps you’d like to attend.’

‘I will be happy to accompany you, Madam, if you go,’ I replied.

‘Thank you,’ said the lady.

‘Pshaw!  Alice, you’ll not go into the woods on so cold a night as this!’

‘Yes, I think I ought to.  Our people will expect me.’

* * * * *

It was about an hour after nightfall when we took our way to the burial-ground.  The moon had risen, but the clouds which gathered when the sun went down, covered its face, and were fast spreading their thick, black shadows over the little collection of negro-houses.  Near two new-made graves were gathered some two hundred men and women, as dark as the night that was setting around them.  As we entered the circle the old preacher pointed to the seats reserved for us, and the sable crowd fell back a few paces, as if, even in the presence of death, they did not forget the difference between their race and ours.

Scattered here and there among the trees, torches of lightwood threw a wild and fitful light over the little cluster of graves, and revealed the long, straight boxes of rough pine that held the remains of the two negroes, and lit up the score of russet mounds beneath which slept the dusky kinsmen who had gone before them.

The simple head-boards that marked these humble graves chronicled no bad biography or senseless rhyme, and told no false tales of lives that had better not have been, but ‘SAM, AGE 22;’ ‘POMPEY;’ ’JAKE’S ELIZA;; ‘AUNT SUE;’ ‘AUNT LUCY’S TOM;’ ‘JOE;’ and other like inscriptions, scratched in rough characters on those unplaned boards, were all the records there.  The rude tenants had passed away and ‘left no sign;’ their birth, their age, their deeds, were alike unknown—­unknown, but not forgotten; for are they not written in the book of His remembrance—­and when He counteth up his jewels, may not some of them be there?

The queer, grotesque dress, and sad, earnest looks of the black group; the red, fitful glare of the blazing pine, and the white faces of the tapped trees, gleaming through the gloom like so many sheeted-ghosts gathered to some death-carnival, made up a strange, wild scene—­the strangest and the wildest I had ever witnessed.