The days grew hotter, the green corn waved on the hill-side, the wheat was ripening, but the deep mystery of death was over it all. The boy goes about his play, he shouts and has his daily contentions, his quarrels and fights, but darkness comes, and as he goes to his bed, his mind reverts to a soul that has recently taken its flight. Older people have the consoling prop of religion or the forceful brace of philosophy, but in the boy's nostrils lives the scent of the roses that lay upon the breast of mystic death; a fear possesses him as he peeps in at the parlor door. Ah, many days must fall upon a sad memory before it is sweetened. They told me that my young mistress was in Heaven. I asked Aunt Mag if she would be my mistress there, and she said no, that there was no mistresses in Heaven, no slaves, but all white and the angels of God. And with the flash of iconoclastic reason that comes to youth, I asked her why God made black people belong to white people on the earth and afterward made them all equal in Heaven. The old woman turned from her spinning wheel and held up her hands in fright. "Chile," she said, "you musn't talk like dat. Whut de Lawd do it ain't fur us ter question, an' ef you wan't so young you mout git struck wid lightenin' fur sayin' dem words. Run off ober yander in de yard an' play. I'se er feered de lightenin' mought strike at you anyhow." That night as Bob and I lay in our room, he in his high canopied bed, and I on my low lounge, I asked him if he knew that all the black people would be white in Heaven. "Yes, of course," he answered. "It would be a funny Heaven with a lot of niggers standing about, grinning." "But they wouldn't have to grin." "No, but they would." "And you won't own me there, will you?" I said, after a moment's silence. "No, you'll belong to God." "But don't I belong to God now?" I heard him turn over. "Yes, but you belong to me, too. And when I get through with you God may have you. Get over in my bed and I'll bet I can throw you out." "No, Old Miss might hear us. But do you think," I asked after musing for a time, "that we'll know each other up there and talk about the time when we were down here?" "Yes; why not?" "But you'd tell me that I used to belong to you and God wouldn't like that." "Well, then, we won't say anything about it, but we'll think about it all the same." "Yes, we'd keep it to ourselves. But if a nigger angel beats a white angel flying, there'll be trouble, won't there?" "There won't be anything of that. God won't let the nigger angels out-fly the white ones."