On a rustic seat, near a rear door, white-haired old Sam is sitting, listening intently, while dusky Mug reads to him from the book of books, the one he prizes above all else, stopping occasionally to expound, in his own way, some point which he fancies may not be clear to her, likening every good man to “Massah Hugh,” and every bad one to the leader of the “Suddern ’Federacy,” whose horse he declares he held once in “ole Virginny,” telling Mug, in an aside, “how, if ’twasn’t wicked, nor agin’ de scripter, he should most wish he’d put beech nuts under Massah Jeffres’ saddle, and so broke his fetched neck, ’fore he raise sich a muss, runnin’ calico so high that Miss Ellis ’clar she couldn’t ‘ford it, and axin’ fifteen cents for a paltry spool of cotton.”

In the stable yard, Claib, his good-humored face all aglow with pride, is exercising the fiery Rocket, who arches his neck as proudly as of old, and dances mincingly around, while Lulu leans over the gate, watching not so much him as the individual who holds him.  And now that it grows darker, and the ripple of the river sounds more like eventide, lights gleam from the pleasant parlor, and thither Hugh and Alice repair, still hand in hand, still looking love into each other’s eyes, but not forgetting others in their own great happiness.

Very pleasantly Alice smiles upon Mrs. Worthington and Aunt Eunice sitting by the cheerful fire just kindled on the marble hearth; and then, withdrawing her hand from Hugh’s, trips up the stairs and knocking at a door, goes in where Densie sits, watching the daylight fade from the western sky, and whispering to herself of the baby she could not find when she went back to her home in the far-off city.  Without turning her head, she puts to Alice the same question she puts to every one: 

“Have you children, madam?” and when Alice answers no, she adds:  “Be thankful then, for they will never call you a white nigger, as ’Lina did her mother.  Poor ’Lina, she died, though saying ‘Our Father.’  Will you say that with me?”

“Yes, Densie, it’s almost time to say our evening prayer, I came for you,” Alice rejoins, and taking the crazed creature’s hand, she leads her gently down to the parlor below, where, ere long, the blacks are all assembled, and kneeling side by side, they follow with stammering tongues, but honest hearts, their beloved master as he says first the prayer our Savior taught, and then with words of thankful praise asks God to bless and keep him and his in the days to come, even as He has blessed and kept them in the days gone by.