Old Sophy was a member of the Reverend Doctor Honeywood’s church.  She had been put through the necessary confessions in a tolerably satisfactory manner.  To be sure, as her grandfather had been a cannibal chief, according to the common story, and, at any rate, a terrible wild savage, and as her mother retained to the last some of the prejudices of her early education, there was a heathen flavor in her Christianity which had often scandalized the elder of the minister’s two deacons.  But, the good minister had smoothed matters over:  had explained that allowances were to be made for those who had been long sitting without the gate of Zion,—­that, no doubt, a part of the curse which descended to the children of Ham consisted in “having the understanding darkened,” as well as the skin,—­and so had brought his suspicious senior deacon to tolerate old Sophy as one of the communion of fellow-sinners.

—­Poor things!  How little we know the simple notions with which these rudiments of souls are nourished by the Divine Goodness!  Did not Mrs. Professor come home this very blessed morning with a story of one of her old black women?

“And how do you feel to-day, Mrs. Robinson?”

“Oh, my dear, I have this singing in my head all the time.” (What doctors call tinnitus aurium.)

“She ’s got a cold in the head,” said old Mrs. Rider.

“Oh, no, my dear!  Whatever I’m thinking about, it’s all this singing, this music.  When I’m thinking of the dear Redeemer, it all turns into this singing and music.  When the clark came to see me, I asked him if he couldn’t cure me, and he said, No,—­it was the Holy Spirit in me, singing to me; and all the time I hear this beautiful music, and it’s the Holy Spirit a-singing to me.”

The good man waited for Sophy to speak; but she did not open her lips as yet.

“I hope you are not troubled in mind or body,” he said to her at length, finding she did not speak.

The poor old woman took out a white handkerchief, and lifted it—­to her black face.  She could not say a word for her tears and sobs.

The minister would have consoled her; he was used to tears, and could in most cases withstand their contagion manfully; but something choked his voice suddenly, and when he called upon it, he got no answer, but a tremulous movement of the muscles, which was worse than silence.

At last she spoke.

“Oh, no, no, no!  It’s my poor girl, my darling, my beauty, my baby, that ’s grown up to be a woman; she will come to a bad end; she will do something that will make them kill her or shut her up all her life.  Or, Doctor, Doctor, save her, pray for her!  It a’n’t her fault.  It a’n’t her fault.  If they knew all that I know, they would n’ blame that poor child.  I must tell you, Doctor:  if I should die, perhaps nobody else would tell you.  Massa Veneer can’t talk about it.  Doctor Kittredge won’t talk about it.  Nobody but old Sophy to tell you, Doctor; and old Sophy can’t die without telling you.”