Aunt Eunice, who understood managing blacks better than his timid mother or his inexperienced wife, was to be his housekeeper in that new home of his, where the colonel and his family would always be welcome; and having thus provided for those for whom it was his duty to care, he bade adieu to Kentucky, and returned to Snowdon in time to join the Christmas party at Terrace Hill, where Irving Stanley was a guest, and where, in spite of the war clouds darkening our land, and in spite of the sad, haunting memories of the dead, there was much hilarity and joy—­reminding the villagers of the olden time when Terrace Hill was filled with gay revelers.  Anna Millbrook was there, more beautiful than in her girlhood, and almost childishly fond of her missionary Charlie, who she laughingly declared was perfectly incorrigible on the subject of surplice and gown, adding that as the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain; and so she was fast becoming an out-and-out Presbyterian of the very bluest stripe.

Sweet Anna!  None who looked into her truthful, loving face, or knew the beautiful consistency of her daily life, could doubt that whether Presbyterian or Episcopal in sentiment, the heart was right and the feet were treading the narrow path which leadeth unto life eternal.

It was a happy week spent at Terrace Hill; but one heart ached to its very core when, at its close, Irving Stanley went back to where duty called him, trusting that the God who had succored him thus far, would shield him from future harm, and keep him safely till the coming autumn, when, with the first falling of the leaf, he would gather to his embrace his darling Adah, who, with every burden lifted from her spirits, had grown in girlish beauty until others than himself marveled at her strange loveliness.

* * * * *

On the white walls of a handsome country seat just on the banks of the Connecticut, the light of the April sunset falls, and the soft April wind kisses the fair cheek and lifts the golden curls of the young mistress of Spring Bank—­for so, in memory of the olden time, have they named their new home—­Hugh and Alice, who, arm in arm, walk up and down the terraced garden, talking softly of the way they have been led, and gratefully ascribing all praise to Him who rules and overrules, but does nought save good to those who love Him.

Down in the meadow land and at the rear of the building, dusky forms are seen—­the negroes, who have come to their Northern home, and among them the runaway, who, ashamed of his desertion, has returned to his former master, resenting the name of contraband, and dismissing the ultra-abolitionists as humbugs, who deserved putting in the front of every battle.  Hugh knows it will be hard accustoming these blacks to Northern usages and ways of doing things, but as he has their good in view as well as his own, and as they will not leave him, he feels sure that in time he will succeed, and cares but little for the opinion of those who wonder what he “expects to do with that lazy lot of niggers.”