His year of engagement, the happiest time of a young man's life, began
on golden wings. There came rumors of war, and the wings of the
glad-hued year drooped sadly. Sadly they drooped, and seemed to fold,
when one day, between the rumors and predictions of strife, Dudley
Stone, the old master, slipped quietly away out into the unknown.

There were wife, daughter, son, and faithful slaves about his bed, and
they wept for him sincere tears, for he had been a good husband and
father and a kind master. But he smiled, and, conscious to the last,
whispered to them a cheery good-bye. Then, turning to Gideon, who
stood there bowed with grief, he raised one weak finger, and his lips
made the word, "Remember!"

They laid him where they had laid one generation after another of the
Stones and it seemed as if a pall of sorrow had fallen upon the whole
place. Then, still grieving, they turned their long-distracted
attention to the things that had been going on around, and lo! the
ominous mutterings were loud, and the cloud of war was black above
them.

It was on an April morning when the storm broke, and the plantation,
master and man, stood dumb with consternation, for they had hoped,
they had believed, it would pass. And now there was the buzz of men
who talked in secret corners. There were hurried saddlings and
feverish rides to town. Somewhere in the quarters was whispered the
forbidden word "freedom," and it was taken up and dropped breathlessly
from the ends of a hundred tongues. Some of the older ones scouted it,
but from some who held young children to their breasts there were
deep-souled prayers in the dead of night. Over the meetings in the