Louis crossed the room, and offering his hand, said with emotion: 

“Thank God, the truth I uttered found soil.  May the years water with the dews of their love, the one seed fallen on rich ground, and may we, sir, live to be a unit in our thought and action, and you too, gentlemen,” turning to the two who were silent.

A short and pleasant conversation followed, and they took their departure.  As they left us, Clara said: 

“Well done, Louis.  Here is a work and Emily will help you do it.”

Louis had grown grandly beautiful through these years, and never had he seemed for one moment careless or unmindful of any simplest need.  We walked together truly, keeping pace through the years whose crown we wore as yet lightly.  He said I grew young all the time, and often, when thoughts of his work filled his mind, as he sat looking on into the future, finding one by one the paths which, like small threads running through a garment, led to the unfoldment of life, he would hold my hands in his, and when, like a picture, the way and means all made plain, he would say: 

“My Emily, do you see it?  Oh? you have helped me to find it, and still you see it not; then I must tell you,” and he would unfold to me the work not of a coming day only—­but sometimes even that of months and years.

He kept the promise made to the mill-owners, and the hearts of the little operatives knew him as their friend.  When the work he was doing for them commenced, Aunt Hildy had said: 

“That’s it; put not your light under a bushel but where men can see it, Louis, for I tell you the candles you carry to folks’ hearts are run in the mould of the Lord’s love, and every gleam on ’em is worth seein’.”

Aunt Hildy’s step we knew was growing less firm, and now and then she rode to the village.  Matthias got on bravely, and gloried in the deposit of some “buryin’ money,” as he called it, with Louis, who took it to the bank and brought him a bank-book.

“Who’d a thought on’t, Mas’r Louis, me, an old nigger slave, up heah in de Norf layin’ up money.”

Ben had a saw-mill now of his own, and was an honest and thrifty young man.  Many new houses had been built in our midst, and with them came of course new people and their needs.

We had, up to this time, heard often from our Southern Mary, and her letters grew stronger, telling us how noble a womanhood had crowned her life, and the latter part of 1851 she wrote us of a true marriage with one who loved her dearly.  Her gifts to Mrs. Goodwin had been munificent, and well appreciated by this good woman.  We hoped some time to see her in the North.  She had never lost sight of Mr. Benton, and he still lived with his wife and boys.  This delighted the heart of Mary, and I grew to think of him as one who perhaps had been refined through the fire of suffering, which I secretly hoped had done its work so well that he would not need, as Matthias thought Mas’r Sumner would, “dat eternal fire.”