Her feet were encased in a pair of Dr. Tom Curtis’s rubber-sided _Romeo_ slippers, with the toes removed for greater ease; and she wore my mother’s Paris bonnet of many seasons past, an erection of jet which sprouted purple ostrich tips at intervals. There were other details, such as square gold-rimmed spectacles without glass, a _Janice Meredith_ curl (blond) draped coquettishly over one shoulder, an ancient carpetbag which bulged with sacrifices destined presumably for the altar: a fat roasting pullet, a jar of brandied peaches, a bottle of elderberry wine, other delicacies which she could not afford. But Mahaly never got farther than to the railroad station. Whether the other Negroes would not let her go with them, whether their jeers caused her to lose confidence in the suitability of her appearance before the Lord, or whether at the last she dared not put to the risk of possible disillusionment her secret dreams, her hidden ecstasies, we never knew. But the train for camp ground invariably went off without Mahaly. She would reappear that evening, shorn of her glory and much subdued, to a welcome she was sure of, in some grateful kitchen. Never within my knowledge did Mahaly get to “Conf’rence.” Except once. Aunt Lady told us about it, all these years afterward. It chanced that Dr. Tom, driving past the station just after the annual exodus to camp ground, was struck with the forlornness of the solitary figure which remained; and, being Aunt Lady’s husband and that sort of man, he had offered to drive Mahaly over in state behind his fast span of trotters, having a patient to see in that part of the country. Mahaly had stared incredulously. Then, with a wild shout of “Glory to Gawd! Here I come!” she had clambered into the buggy, and said not another word until, after many miles, he deposited her at the gates of the Promised Land. Then she came down to earth sufficiently to smile her gratitude speechlessly, radiantly. “I declare, the old wench looked almost handsome!” murmured Dr. Tom, remembering it. And that was the last of Mahaly for many a long day. Nobody knew what had become of her. It was a year later that they saw her coming home along the pike, still wearing the pink opera cloak, bedraggled, weak, exhausted, but bearing in her arms a puny yellow baby. “Not her own?” I gasped, incredulous. Aunt Lady nodded. “For all the world like an old cow that’s gone off into the woods to calve, and don’t know whether to be proud or sorry for herself,” she said with the rich tang of the soil that is her heritage.