’Lina could be very gracious when she chose, and as she saw a way by which Adah might be useful to her, she chose to be so now, and treated the unsuspecting girl so kindly, that Adah promised to undertake the task, which proved a harder one than she had anticipated. Anxious to gratify ’Lina, and keep what she was doing a secret from Hugh, who came to the cottage often, she was obliged to work early and late, bending over the dress by the dim candle light, until her head seemed bursting with pain, and rings of fire danced before her eyes. She never would have succeeded but for Uncle Sam, who proved a most efficient member of the household, fitting in every niche and corner, until Aunt Eunice wondered how she had ever lived without him. Particularly did he attach himself to Willie, relieving Adah from all care, and thus enabling her to devote every spare moment to the party dress. “You’s workin’ yourself to death,” he said to her, as late on Saturday night she sat bending to the tallow candle, her hair brushed back from her forehead and a purplish glow upon her cheek. “I know I’m working too hard,” Adah replied, and leaning back in her chair she closed her eyes wearily, while Sam, gazing admiringly at her continued, “You ’minds me some of de young lady in Virginny. Has I ever tole you ’bout her?” “No, who was she?” Adah said, and Sam replied, “She’s what teached me the way to God. She took my dried-up-hand in dem little soft ones of hern, white as cotton bats, and lead me up to de narrow gap. She push me in and say, ‘Go on now, Sam. You’ve got in de right track, that leads to glory hallelujah.’ Didn’t word it just dem words, be sure, but that’s the heft of the meaning. I tell you Sam was mighty nigh as shipwrecked as dat Pollo somebody what Miss _Ellis_ read about in the good book.” “_Miss who?_” Adah asked, and Sam replied, “Miss Ellis. I done forget de other name. _Ellis_ they call her way down thar whar Sam was sold, when dat man with the big _splot_ on his forerd steal me away and sell me in Virginny. Miss ever hearn tell o’ dat?” “Big _what_?” Adah asked, and Sam replied, “Big _scar_ or _mark_ kinder purple, on his forrid, right clus to the har.” Adah shuddered, for the one she knew as her guardian was marked in that way, and she asked Sam to tell her more of the man with the splot. Delighted to tell the story which he never tired of telling, Sam, in his own peculiar dialect, related how four years before, a man calling himself Sullivan had appeared in the neighborhood of his former master’s plantation ingratiating himself into the good graces of the negroes and secretly offering to conduct any to the land of freedom who would put themselves under his protection.