"_They_ were--precisely when it came. Rain never came straighter from heaven." "They?"--I stared. "Yes; Silas and Hester--and Sidney--and Mingo. They must have started soon after moonrise, and had the whole bright night, with its black shadows, for going." "For going where, auntie; going where?" "Then the rain came in God's own hour," she continued, as if wholly to herself, "and washed out their trail." I sprang from the bed. "Aunt 'Liza!" "Yes, Maud, they've run away, and if only they may _get_ away. God be praised!" Of course, I cried like an infant. I threw myself upon her bosom. "Oh, auntie, auntie, I'm afraid it's my fault! But when I tell you how far I was from meaning it----" "Don't tell me a word, my child; I wish it were my fault; I'd like to be in your shoes. And, I don't care how right slavery is, I'll never own a darky again!" One day some two months after, at home again with father. Just as I was leaving the house on some errand, Sidney--ragged, wet, and bedraggled as a lost dog--sprang into my arms. When I had got her reclothed and fed I eagerly heard her story. Three of the four had come safely through; poor Mingo had failed; if I ever tell of him it must be at some other time. In the course of her tale I asked about the compass. "Dat little trick?" she said fondly. "Oh, yass'm, it wah de salvation o' de Lawd 'pon cloudy nights; but time an' ag'in us had to sepa'ate, 'llowin' fo' to rejine togetheh on de bank o' de nex' creek, an' which, de Lawd a-he'pin' of us, h-it al'ays come to pass; an' so, afteh all, Miss Maud, de one thing what stan' us de bes' frien' night 'pon night, next to Gawd hisse'f, dat wah his clock in de ske-eye." VI "Landry," Chester said next day, bringing back the magazine barely half an hour after the book-shop had reopened, "that's a true story!" "Ah, something inside tells you?" "No need! You remember this, near the end? '_Poor Mingo had failed [to escape]; if I ever tell of him it must be at another time_.' Landry, it's so absurd that I hardly have the face to say it; I've got--ha-ha-ha!--I've got a manuscript! and it fills that gap!" The speaker whipped out the "Memorandum"; "Here's the story, by my own uncle, of how the three got over the border and how Mingo failed. I'd totally forgotten I had it. I disliked its beginning far more than I did 'Maud's' yesterday. For I hate masks and costumes as much as Mr. Castanado loves them; and a practical joke--which is what the story begins with, in costume, though it soon leaves it behind--nauseates me. Comical situation it makes for me, this 'Memorandum,' doesn't it--turning up this way?" Ovide replied meditatively: "To lend it, even to me, would seem as though you sought----" "It would put me in a false light! I don't like false lights." "It would mask and costume you."