Aunt Chloe had been bustling about her kitchen “sence de risin’ ob de mo’nin’ star,” and was, in her own estimation, the most important person on the place that day.  As for Bruce he was wild with excitement, and dashed at full speed from the house to the mill, and back again, barking furiously, and trying to tell volumes of, what seemed to him, important news.

As soon as the fog lifted, the horn on the opposite side of the river began to blow impatient summonses for the “superintendent of ferries,” and busy times immediately began for Frank.

What funny loads of black people he brought over!  Old gray-headed uncles, leaning on canes, who told stories of “de good ole times long befo’ de wah”; middle-aged men and women who rejoiced in the present good times of freedom, and comical little pickaninnies, who looked forward with eagerness to the good times to come to them within an hour or so.

And then the teams, the queer home-made carts, most of them drawn by a single steer or cow hitched into shafts, in which the bushels of corn were brought; for everybody who could obtain a bushel of corn had taken Mr. Elmer at his word, and brought it along to be ground free of charge.

One of the men, after seeing his wife and numerous family of children safely on board the boat, went up to Frank with a beaming face, and said,

“Misto Frank, I’se bought a ok.  Dar he is hitched into dat ar kyart, an’ oh! he do plough splendid!”

The “ok,” which poor Joe thought was the proper singular of “oxes,” as he would have called a pair of them, was a meek-looking little creature, harnessed to an old two-wheeled cart by a perfect tangle of ropes and chains.  He was so small that even Frank, accustomed as he was to the ways of the country, almost smiled at the idea of its “ploughing splendid.”

He didn’t, though; for honest Joe was waiting to hear his purchase praised, and Frank praised it by saying it was one of the handsomest oxen of its size he had ever seen.  Joe was fully satisfied with this, and when the boat reached the other side, hurried off to find new admirers for this first piece of actual property he had ever owned, and to tell them that “Misto Frank March, who know all about oxes, say dis yere ok de han’somes’ he ebber seed.”

Of course the Bevils and Carters came over to the picnic.  Grace Bevil, of whom Ruth had already made a great friend, waited with her at the house until the last boat-load of people had been ferried across.  Then Frank called them, and after helping them into the canoe and telling them to sit quiet as ’possums, paddled it up the wild, beautiful river to the mill.

This was a novel experience to the little Wakulla girl, who had never in her life before travelled so easily and swiftly.  She afterwards told her mother that, as she looked far down into the clear depths of the water above which they glided, she thought she knew how angels felt flying through the air.