minister. The great figure towering above the tiny, dusky group, with
bare woolly head and working, apelike face uplifted to the sky, took
on a new grandeur.

But only for a moment did she think of Pete, so marvelously changed.
The hymn was ending--they were a long way past the dear line, _Safe on
his gentle breast_.

Now they were moving, the little "crowd of mo'ners over yonder,"--all
black it looked, house-servants mostly,--and quickly, with a
breathless fear of being too late, she rushed forward and thrust her
head between the singer and a sobbing petticoated figure beside him.

Then she drew back smiling, smiling divinely.

The grief-stricken eyes at the other side of the little grave--a grave
heaped with Radical roses, sweet with one Democrat myrtle cross--had
seen it, _the white face_.

"You go fust, honey, jus' behin' him," Pete whispered, as, trudging
valiantly along with the rest, Hope Carolina passed out of the
cemetery gate.

It was the quaint custom at funerals in Fairville, especially funerals
with negroes, to follow mourners in line from the grave as well as to
it. What had been begun through a lack of sidewalks had been continued
as a ceremony of passionate respect.

Pete bent soft, wet, grateful eyes upon her, pushing her close behind
the one carriage as he spoke--eyes as dear and tender as any old