As for Madeline, she wuz stunned and almost senseless by the blow, and wuz for a long time. Then she had a long sickness, and when she come to herself she seemed to be ponderin’ some deep thought all to herself. The nurse who was watchin’ with her testified that she dropped to sleep one mornin’ before daylight, and when she woke up her patient wuz gone, and the child. She had some money that her old mistress had give her from time to time, and that she had never had to use; that wuz taken, with some valuable jewelry too that that kind old friend had give her—for she had loved to set off her favorite’s dark beauty with the light of precious stones—all these wuz taken; but every article that Monseur De Chasseny had give her wuz left. And all the money that he left for her not a penny wuz ever called for. She disappeared as if she had never been; lawyers and detectives, hired, it wuz spozed, by De Chasseny, could find no trace of her. There wuz a good, fatherly old missionary in the little settlement near by who might perhaps have given some information if he had wanted to; but they never thought of askin’ him, and they would have been no wiser if they had, most probable. But about this time a woman in deep mournin’, with a beautiful young child, come to the little hamlet near Belle Fanchon. She said she wuz a colored woman, though no one would have believed it. The good priest in charge of the Mission—Father Gasperin—he seemed to know sunthin’ about her; he had a brother who wuz a priest in South Carolina. He got her employment as a nurse after her health improved a little. She bought a little cottage and lived greatly respected by all classes, black and white, and nursed ’em both to the best of her abilities—some for nuthin’ and some at about a dollar a day. But her earnest sympathies, her heart-felt affection wuz with the black race. She worked for their good and advancement in every way with a zeal that looked almost as if she wuz tryin’ to atone for some awful mistake in the past—as if she wuz tryin’ to earn forgiveness for forsakin’ her mother’s race for the white people, who wuz always faithless to her race, only when selfishness guided them—who would take the service of their whole life and strength, as if it belonged to ’em; who would take them up as a plaything to divert an hour’s leisure, and then throw the worthless thing down agin. Her whole heart wuz bent upon the good of her mother’s people. She worked constantly for their advancement and regeneration. She bore their intolerable burdens for ’em, she agonized under their unexampled wrongs. She exhorted ’em to become Christians, to study, to learn to guide themselves aright; she besought ’em to elevate themselves by all means in their power. She became a very earnest Christian; she went about doin’ good; she studied her Bible much. The Book that in her bright days of happiness she had slighted became to her now the lamp of her life.