IV

THE CLOCK IN THE SKY

"Now, Maud," said uncle jovially as he, aunt, and I drove into the
confines of their beautiful place one spring afternoon of 1860, "don't
forget that to be too near a thing is as bad for a good view of it as
to be too far away."

I was a slim, tallish girl of scant sixteen, who had never seen a
slaveholder on his plantation, though I had known these two for years,
and loved them dearly, as guests in our Northern home before it was
broken up by the death of my mother. Father was an abolitionist, and
yet he and they had never had a harsh word between them. If the
general goodness of those who do some particular thing were any proof
that that particular thing is good to do, they would have convinced me,
without a word, that slaveholding was entirely right. But they were
not trying to do any such thing. "Remember," continued my uncle,
smiling round at me, "your dad's trusting you not to bring back our
honest opinion--of anything--in place of your own."

"Maud," my aunt hurried to put in, for she knew the advice I had just
heard was not the kind I most needed, "you're going to have for your
own maid the blackest girl you ever saw."

"And the best," added my uncle; "she's as good as she is black."