"I have been talking with Leland," Mr. Travilla remarked aside to his friend, "and he proposes that we accompany the procession as a mounted guard." "Good!" said Mr. Dinsmore, "Horace and I will join you: and let us all go armed to the teeth." "Certainly, and I accept your offer with thanks. Some of the boys themselves are pretty fair marksmen but they were all robbed of their arms last night." "Let us supply them again, Edward," exclaimed Elsie, with energy "and have them practice shooting at a mark." Her husband assented with a smile. "You are growing warlike in your feelings," he said. "Yes, I believe in the privilege and duty of self-defence." Toward evening Mr. Dinsmore rode back to the Oaks, returning to Ion with his son, shortly before the appointed hour for the obsequies. Elsie saw them and her husband ride away in the direction of the quarter, not without some fluttering of the heart, and with a silent prayer for their safety, retired with her children, to the observatory at the top of the house, from whence a full view might be obtained of the whole route from the cabin of Uncle Mose to the somewhat distant place of sepulture; the spot chosen for that purpose in accommodation to the superstitious feelings of the blacks, which led them to prefer to lay their dead at a distance from their own habitations. The children watched with deep interest as the procession formed, each man carrying a blazing pine-knot, passed down the one street of the quarter, and wound its slow way along the road that skirted two sides of the plantation, then half way up a little hill, where it gathered in a circle about the open grave. Twilight was past, thick clouds hid the moon and the torches shone out like stars in the darkness. "Mamma, what dey doin' now?" asked Harold. "Listen! perhaps you may hear something," she answered, and as they almost held their breath to hear, a wild, sweet negro melody came floating upon the still night air. "They're singing," whispered Vi, "singing Canaan, 'cause Uncle Mose, and little Baby Ben have got safe there." No one spoke again till the strains had ceased with the ending of the hymn. "Now Mr. Wood is talking, I suppose," remarked Eddie, in a subdued tone, "telling them we must all die, and which is the way to get to heaven." "Else praying," said Vi. "Mamma, what is die?" asked Harold leaning on her lap. "If we love Jesus, darling, it is going home to be with him, and oh, so happy." "But Baby Ben die, and me saw him in Aunt Dicey's house." "That was only his body, son; the soul--the part that thinks and feels and loves--has gone away to heaven, and after a while God will take the body there too." For obvious reasons the services at the grave were made very short, and in another moment they could see the line of torches drawing rapidly nearer, till it reached the quarter and broke into fragments.