"Quite half-past, darling," went on the liquid Southern voice, still tremulous with emotion, still with the yearning anxiety for its own that the death of any child of kindred age brings to the mother breast. But there was no answer, and for a very good reason. Down the long clay road which led from living and now pitying Fairville to the little cemetery where slept its quiet dead, Hope Carolina was running. * * * * * A mile and a half is a long way for a wee fat maiden to go when the August sun is beating down upon bare heads and necks, and red clay roads spread sun-baked ruts and furrows as sharp as knives. As many times as her years, Hope Carolina fell by the way; oftener, indeed. But the good folk in the scattered blind-closed houses along the way--who, too, a half-hour ago had whispered tremulously, "There won't be a white face"--saw no sign of tears. "It's only Hope Carolina," called somebody, and other watchers laughed; for all knew the wandering ways of this wise and fearless child. And so, stumbling, falling, struggling to her feet again,--wiping away blood once, even, with impatient hand,--on, on the little figure in pink and white had gone, a brave and storm-driven flower in the cruel road. And at last there were the shining crosses and columns of the dead. One inclosure, radiant with more magnolias and angel poplars, more stately and wonderful than all the rest, was the dear Preston plot. The child, who had paused anxiously at the open gate, sighed, sighed with immense relief, to see it still without the sacrilege of Radical invasion. He hadn't taken _that_, too! Then, a step farther, she stopped again. The red clayey place he had taken had neither fence nor flowers. Only a tree grew near his place, a great solitary pine, with the low wailing of whose softly swaying needles singing was mingled. A single person was singing--a single _black_ person. She knew by the soft mellow roll of the voice, the sweet, oh, honey-sweet sound of the hymn words, which she herself had sung many times at the Baptist Sunday-school, where she had to go when there was no Episcopal minister. The great figure towering above the tiny, dusky group, with bare woolly head and working, apelike face uplifted to the sky, took on a new grandeur. But only for a moment did she think of Pete, so marvelously changed. The hymn was ending--they were a long way past the dear line, _Safe on his gentle breast_. Now they were moving, the little "crowd of mo'ners over yonder,"--all black it looked, house-servants mostly,--and quickly, with a breathless fear of being too late, she rushed forward and thrust her head between the singer and a sobbing petticoated figure beside him. Then she drew back smiling, smiling divinely. The grief-stricken eyes at the other side of the little grave--a grave heaped with Radical roses, sweet with one Democrat myrtle cross--had seen it, _the white face_.