the providing for the family was entrusted to him. Tom regarded his airy
young master with an odd mixture of fealty, reverence and fatherly
solicitude, and his friendship with Eva grew with the child's growth;
but his home yearnings grew so strong that he tried to write a
letter--so unsuccessfully that St. Clare offered to write for him, and.
Tom had the joy of receiving an answer from Master George, stating that
Aunt Chloe had been hired out, at her own request, to a confectioner,
and was gaining vast sums of money, all of which was to be laid by for
Tom's redemption.

About two years after his coming, Eva began to fail rapidly, and even
her father could no longer deceive himself. Eva was about to leave him.
It was Tom's greatest joy to carry the frail little form in his arms, up
and down, into the veranda, and to him she talked, what she would not
distress her father with, of these mysterious intimations which the soul
feels ere it leaves its clay for ever. He lay, at last, all night in the
veranda ready to rouse at the least call, and at midnight came the
message. Earth was passed and earthly pain; so solemn was the triumphant
brightness of that face it checked even the sobs of sorrow. A glorious
smile, and she said, brokenly, "Oh--love--joy--peace" and passed from
death unto life.

Week after week glided by in the St. Clare mansion and the waves of life
settled back to their usual flow where that little bark had gone down.
St. Clare was in many respects another man; he read his little Eva's
Bible seriously and honestly; he thought soberly of his relations to his
servants, and he commenced the legal steps necessary to Tom's
emancipation as he had promised Eva he would do. But, one evening while
Tom was sitting thinking of his home, feeling the muscles of his brawny
arms with joy as he thought how he would work to buy his wife and boys;