“Hi! hit's Marse Dan!” they shrieked in chorus. “Hit's Marse Dan en Brer Abel! Brer Abel en Marse Dan is done come agin!” Dan wept with them--tears of weakness, of anguish, of faint hope amid the dark. As their hands closed over his, he grasped them as if his eyes had gone suddenly blind. “Where are the others? Congo, for God's sake, tell me where are the others?” “We all's hyer, Marse Dan. We all's hyer,” they protested, sobbing. “En Ole Marster en Ole Miss dey's in de house er de overseer--dey's right over dar behine de orchard whar you use ter projick wid de ploughs, en Brer Cupid and Sis Rhody dey's a-gittin' dem dey supper.” “Then let me go,” cried Dan. “Let me go!” and he started at a run past the gray ruins and the standing kitchen, past the flower garden and the big woodpile, to the orchard and the small frame house of Harris the overseer. Big Abel kept at his heels, panting, grunting, calling upon his master to halt and upon Congo to hurry after. “You'll skeer dem ter deaf--you'll skeer Ole Miss ter deaf,” cried Congo from the rear, and drawing a trembling breath, Dan slackened his pace and went on at a walk. At last, when he reached the small frame house and put his foot upon the step, he hesitated so long that Congo slipped ahead of him and softly opened the door. Then his young master followed and stood looking with blurred eyes into the room. Before a light blaze which burned on the hearth, the Major was sitting in an arm chair of oak splits, his eyes on the blossoming apple trees outside, and above his head, the radiant image of Aunt Emmeline, painted as Venus in a gown of amber brocade. All else was plain and clean--the well-swept floor, the burnished andirons, the cupboard filled with rows of blue and white china--but that one glowing figure lent a festive air to the poorly furnished room, and enriched with a certain pomp the tired old man, dozing, with bowed white head, in the rude arm chair. It was the one thing saved from the ashes--the one vestige of a former greatness that still remained. As Dan stood there, a clock on the mantel struck the hour, and the Major turned slowly toward him. “Bring the lamps, Cupid,” he said, though the daylight was still shining. “I don't like the long shadows--bring the lamps.” Choking back a sob, Dan crossed the floor and knelt down by the chair. “We have come back, grandpa,” he said. “We beg your pardon, and we have come back--Big Abel and I.” For a moment the Major stared at him in silence; then he reached out and felt him with shaking hands as if he mistrusted the vision of his eyes. “So you're back, Champe, my boy,” he muttered. “My eyes are bad--I thought at first that it was Dan--that it was Dan.” “It is I, grandpa,” said Dan, slowly. “It is I--and Big Abel, too. We are sorry for it all--for everything, and we have come back poorer than we went away.”