“Yes, and I doubt if we have canonised Sumner yet. All right. If you say

so, I ’ll order a steam calliope stationed at the gate and hire a man

to play Dixie for you!”

She laughed, and ran up the steps.

* * * * *

Sallie determined to keep the secret of her sorrow in her own heart. On

the ocean voyage she had cried the whole first day, and then kissed her

lover’s picture, put it down in the bottom of her trunk, brushed the

tears away and determined the world should not look on her suffering.

She had written Helen of her lover’s declaration, and of her happiness.

She would find a good excuse for her sorrowful face in their separation.

She knew he would write to her, for he had said so, and she had slipped

the address into his hand as he left the car that night.

At first she was puzzled to think what she could do about answering

these letters so Helen would not suspect her trouble. Then she hit on

the plan of writing to him every day, posting the letters herself and

placing them in her own trunk instead of the post-box.

“He will read them some day. They will relieve my heart,” she sadly told

herself.

Helen met her on the pier with a cry of girlish joy, and the first word

she uttered was, “Oh! Sallie, Bob loves me! He’s been here two weeks,

and he’s just gone home. I have been in heaven. We are engaged!”

“Then I ’ll kiss you again, Helen.”--She gave her another kiss.

“And I’ve a big letter at home for you already! It’s post-marked

‘Hambright.’ It came this morning. I know you will feast on it. If

Bob don’t write me faithfully I ’ll make him come here and live in

Boston.”

When Sallie got this letter, she sat down in her room, and read and

re-read its passionate words. There was a tone of bitterness and wounded

pride in it. She struggled bravely to keep the tears back. Then the tone

of the letter changed to tenderness and faith and infinite love that

struggled in vain for utterance.

She kissed the name and sighed. “Now I must go down and chat and smile

with Helen. She’s so silly about her own love, if I talk about Bob she

will forget I live.”

CHAPTER XIX--THE SHADOW OF A DOUBT

MRS. WORTH had arrived in Boston a few days after Sallie, coming direct

by rail. She was still very weak from her recent attack, and it cut her

to the heart to watch Sallie write those letters faithfully, and never

mail them out of deference to her wishes.

One night she drew her daughter down and kissed her.

“Sallie, dear, you don’t know how it hurts me to see you suffer this

way, and write, and write these letters your lover never sees. You may

send him one letter a week, I don’t care what the General says.”

There was a sob and another kiss and, Sallie was crying on her breast.

In answer to her first letter, Gaston was thrilled with a new

inspiration. He sat down that night and answered it in verse. All the

deep longings of his soul, his hopes and fears, his pain and dreams he

set in rhythmic music. Her mother read all his letters after Sallie. And

she cried with sorrow and pride over this poem.

“Sallie, I don’t blame you for being proud of such a lover. Your life

is rich hallowed by the love of such a man. Your father is wrong in his

position. If I were a girl and held the love of such a man, I’d cherish

it as I would my soul’s salvation. Be patient and faithful.”

“Sweet mother heart!” she whispered as she smoothed the grey hair

tenderly.

Allan McLeod had arrived in Boston the day before and the morning’s

papers were full of an interview with him on his brilliant achievement

in breaking the ranks of the Bourbon Democracy in North Carolina, and

the certainty of the success of his ticket at the approaching election.

McLeod sent the paper to Mrs. Worth by a special messenger, lest she

might not see it, and that evening called. He asked Sallie to accompany

him to the theatre, and when she refused spent the evening.

When her mother had retired McLeod drew his seat near her and again told

her in burning words his love.

“Miss ‘Sallie, I have won the battle of life at its very threshold. I

shall be a United States Senator in a few months. I want to lead you, my

bride, into the gallery of the Senate before I walk down its aisles

to take the oath. I have loved you faithfully for years. I have your

father’s consent to my suit. I asked him before leaving on this trip.

Surely you will not say no?”

“Allan McLeod, I do not love you. I do love another. I hate the sight of

you and the sound of your voice.”

“If you do not marry Gaston, will you give me a chance?”

“If I do not marry the man of my choice, I will never marry. Now go.”

McLeod returned to the hotel with the fury of the devil seething in

his soul. He determined to return to Ham-bright, and if possible entrap

Gaston in dissipation and destroy his faith in Sallie’s loyalty.

He wrote to the General that he had been rejected by his daughter who

still corresponded with Gaston. When General Worth received this letter

he wrote in wrath to his wife, peremptorily forbidding Sallie to write

another line to Gaston and closed saying, “I had trusted this matter to

you, my dear, now I take it out of your hands. I forbid another line or

word to this man.”

Gaston watched and waited in vain for the letter he was to receive next

week. Again his soul sank with doubt and fear. What fiend was striking

him with an unseen hand? He felt he should choke with rage as he thought

of the infamy of such a warfare.

His mother said to him shortly after McLeod’s arrival, “Charlie, I have

some bad news for you.”

“It can’t be any worse than I have, the misery of an unexplained silence

of two weeks.”

“I feel that I ought to tell you. It is the explanation of that silence,

I fear.”

“What is it, Mother?” he asked soberly.

“I hear that Sallie has plunged into frivolous society, is dancing every

night at the hotel at Narragansett Pier where they are stopping now, and

flirting with a halfdozen young men.”

“I don’t believe it,” growled Gaston.

“I’m afraid it’s true, Charlie, and I’m furious with her for treating

you like this. I thought she had more character.”

“I ’ll love and trust her to the end!” he declared as he went moodily

to his office. But the poison of suspicion rankled in his thoughts. Why

had she ceased to write? Was not this mask of society a habit with those

who had learned to wear it? Was not habit, after all, life? Could one

ever escape it? It seemed to him more than probable that the old habits

should re-assert themselves in such a crisis, a thousand miles removed

from him or his personal influence. He held a very exaggerated idea of

the corruption of modern society. And his heart grew heavier from day to

day with the feeling that she was slipping away from him.

CHAPTER XX--A NEW LESSON IN LOVE

McLEOD returned home to find his plans of political success in perfect

order. The programme went through without a hitch. In spite of the most

desperate efforts of the Democrats, he carried the state by a large

majority and made, for the Republican party and its strange allies, the

first breach in the solid phalanx of Democratic supremacy since Le-gree

left his legacy of corruption and terror.

The Legislature elected two Senators. To the amazement of the world, the

day before the caucus of the Republicans met, McLeod withdrew. He had no

opposition so far as anybody knew, but a curious thing had happened. The

Rev. John Durham discovered the fact that McLeod kept a still and had

established his mother as an illicit distiller years before. One of his

deputies who had become an inebriate, confessed this to the doctor who

had informed the Preacher.

The Preacher put this important piece of information into the hands of a

daring young Republican who had always been one from principle. He

went to Raleigh and interviewed McLeod. At first McLeod denied, and

blustered, and swore. When he produced the proofs, he gave up, and asked

sullenly, “What do you want?”

“Get out of the race.”

“All right. Is that all? You’re on top.”

“No, give me the nomination.”

“Never!” he yelled with an oath.

“Then I ’ll expose you in to-morrow morning’s paper, and that’s the

end of you.”

McLeod hesitated a moment, and then said, “I ’ll agree. You’ve got me.

But I ’ll make one little condition. You must give me the name of your

informant.”

“The Rev. John Durham.”

“I thought as much.”

To the amazement of everyone McLeod waived the crown aside and placed

it on the head of one of his lieutenants. He returned to Hambright from

this dramatic event with an unruffled front. To his cronies he said,

“Bah! I was joking. Never had any idea of taking the office for myself.

I’m playing for larger stakes. I make these puppets, and pull the

strings.”

He devoted himself assiduously in the leisure which followed to Mrs.

Durham. He never intimated to Durham that he knew anything about the

part he had taken in his withdrawal from the Senatorship. Nor had the

Preacher told his wife of his discovery. They had quarrelled several

times about McLeod. His wife seemed determined to remain loyal to the

boy she had taught.

McLeod in his talk with her intimated that he had withdrawn from a

desire vaguely forming in his mind to get out of the filth of politics

altogether, sooner or later, influenced by her voice alone.

With subtle skill he played upon her vanity and jealousy, and at last

felt that he had entangled her so far he could dare a declaration of his

feelings. There was one element only in her mental make-up he feared.

She held tenaciously the old-fashioned romantic ideals of love. To

her it seemed a divine mystery linking the souls that felt it to the

infinite. If he could only destroy this divine mystery idea, he felt

sure that her sense of isolation, and her proud rebellion against

the disappointments of life would make her an easy prey to his

blandishments.

He searched his library over for a book that could scientifically

demonstrate the purely physical basis of love. He knew that somewhere in

his studies at a medical college in New York he had read it.

At last he discovered it among a lot of old magazines. It was a brief

study by a great physician of Paris, entitled “The Natural History of

Love.” He gave it to her, and asked her to read it and give him her

candid opinion of its philosophy.

He waited a week and on a Saturday when the Preacher was absent at

one of his county mission stations he called at the hotel for a long

afternoon’s talk. He determined to press his suit.

“Do you know, Mrs. Durham, what gives a preacher his boasted power of

the spirit over his audiences?” he inquired with a curious laugh in the

midst of which he changed his tone of voice.

“No, you are an expert on the diseases of preachers, what is it?”

“Very simple. Religion is founded on love, there never was a magnetic

preacher who was not a resistless magnet for scores of magnetic women.

If you don’t believe it, watch how resistless is the impulse of all

these good-looking women to shake hands with their preacher, and how

fondly they look at him across the pews if the crowd is too dense to

reach his hand.”

A frown passed over her face, and she winced at the thrust, yet her

answer was a surprising question to him.

“Do you really believe in anything, Allan?”

“You ask that?” he said leaning closer. “You whose great dark eyes look

through a man’s very soul?”

“I begin to think I have never seen yours. I doubt if you have a soul.”

“Well, what’s the use of a soul? I can’t satisfy the wants of my body.”

“Answer my question. Do you believe in anything?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice sinking to a tense whisper, “I believe in

Woman,--in love.”

“In Woman?”

“Yes, Woman.”

“You mean women,” she sneered.

He started at her answer, looked intently at her, and said deliberately,

“I mean you, the One Woman, the only woman in the world to me.”

“I do not believe one word you have uttered, yet, I confess with shame,

you have always fascinated me.”

“Why with shame? You have but one life to live. The years pass. Even

beauty so rare as yours fades at last. The end is the grave and worms.

Why dash from your beautiful lips the cup of life when it is full to the

brim?”

“How skillfully you echo the dark thoughts that flit on devil wings

through the soul, when we feel the bitterness of life’s failure, its

contradictions and mysteries!” she exclaimed, closing her eyes for a

moment and leaning back in her chair.

“You’ve often talked to me about the necessity of some sort of slavery

for the Negro if he remain in America. I begin to believe that slavery

is a necessity for all women.”

“I fail to see it, sir.”

“All women are born slaves and choose to remain so through life. It

is curious to see you, a proud imperious woman, born of a race of

unconquerable men, staggering to-day under the chains of four thousand

years of conventional laws made by the brute strength of men. And

you, if you struggle at all, beat your wings against the bars that the

slaveholding male brute has built about your soul, fall back at last

and give up to the will of your master. This too, when you hold in your

simple will the key that would unlock your prison door and make you

free. It’s a pitiful sight.”

“How shrewd a tempter!”

“There you are again. He who dares to tell you that you are of yourself

a living human being, divinely free, is a tempter from the devil. You

are thinking about eternity. Well, now is eternity. Live, stand erect,

take a deep breath, and dare to be yourself and do what you please. That

is what I do. The future is a myth.”

“Yes, I know the freedom of which you boast,” she quietly observed, “it

is the freedom of lust. The return to nature you dream of is simply

the fall downward into the dirt out of which a rational and spiritual

manhood has grown. I feel and know this in spite of your handsome face

and the fine ring of your voice.”

“Dirt. Dirt!” he mused. “Yes, I was in the dirt once, was born in

it, the dirt of poverty and superstition and fears of laws here and

hereafter. But I awoke at last, and shook it off, washed myself in

knowledge and stood erect. I am a man now, with the eye of a king,

conscious of my power. I look a lying hypocritical world in the face. I

have made up my mind to live my own life in spite of fools, and in spite

of the laws and conventions of fools.”

“And yet I believe you carry a horse-chestnut in your pocket, and will

not undertake an important work on Friday?” she returned.

“But I never strangle a normal impulse of my nature that I can satisfy.

I am not that big a fool, at least.”

She was silent, and then said, “I can never thank you enough for the

book you sent me.”

McLeod sighed in relief at her change of tone. After all she was just

tantalising him!

“Then you liked it?” he cried with glittering eyes.

“I devoured every word of it with a greed you can not understand. A

great man wrote it.”

“Then we can understand each other better from today,” he interrupted

smilingly.

“Yes, far better. You gave me this book hoping that it might influence

my character by destroying my ideal of love, didn’t you, now frankly?”

“Honestly, I did hope it would emancipate you from superstitions.”

“It has,” she declared, but with a curious curve of her lip that chilled

him.

“What are you driving at?” he asked suspiciously.

“This book has given me the key that unlocked for me, for the first

time, the riddle of my physical being. It has shown me the physical

basis of love, just as I knew before there was a physical basis of the

soul.”

“What did you understand the book to teach?” he asked.

“Simply that love is based in its material life, on the lobe of the

brain which develops at the base of a child’s head near the age of

thirteen. That this lobe of the brain is the sex centre, and love is

impossible until it develops. That this centre of new powers at the base

of the skull is a physical magnet. That when a man and woman approach

each other, who are by nature mates, these magnetic centres are

disturbed by action and reaction, and that this disturbance develops

the second elemental passion called love. The first elemental passion,

hunger, has for its end the preservation of the individual; while love

finds its fulfillment in the preservation of the species. Love finds its

satisfaction in the child, its ardour cools, and it dies, unless kept

alive by the social conventions of the family, which are not based

merely on this violent emotion, but also on unity of tastes, which

produce the sense of comradeship. For these reasons it is possible to

fall violently in love more than once, and there are dozens of people

who possess this magnetic power over us and would respond to it

violently if we only came in social contact with them. That the romantic

bombast about the possibility of but one love in life, and that of

supernatural origin, is twaddle, and leads to false ideals. Have I given

the argument?”

“Exactly. But what do you deduce from it?”

“Freedom!”

“Good!” he cried, licking his lips.

“Freedom from superstitions about love,” she answered, “and positive

knowledge of its elemental beauty which Nature reveals. In short, I no

longer wonder and brood over your charm for me. I know exactly what it

means, and how it might occur again and again with another and another.

I have simply throttled it in a moment by an act of my will, based on

this knowledge.”

“You amaze me.”

“No doubt. One’s character centres in the soul, or the appetites. Mine

is in the soul, yours in the appetites. I see you to-day as you really

are, and I loathe you with an unspeakable loathing. You have opened

my eyes with this beautiful little book of Nature. I thank you. Your

scientist has convinced me that there are possibly a hundred men in the

world who would affect me as you do, were we to meet. And when I looked

back into the sweet face of my dead boy, I learned another truth, that

in the union of my first great love I was bound in marriage, not simply

by a social convention, or a state contract, but for life by Nature’s

eternal law. The period of infancy of one child extends over twenty-one

years, covering the whole maternal life of the woman who marries at the

proper age of twenty-four. This union of one man and one woman never

seemed so sacred to me as now. It is Nature’s law, it is God’s law.”

McLeod’s anger was fast rising.

“Don’t fool yourself,” he sneered, “You may overwork your maternal

intuitions. You remember the kiss you gave me when a boy just fifteen?

Well, you fooled yourself then about its maternal quality. The magnet

of my red head drew your coal black one down to it with irresistible

power.”

“Perhaps so, Allan. Your work is done. There is the door. I say a last

good-bye, with pity for your shallow nature, and the bitter revelation

you have given me of your worthlessness.”

Without another word he left, but with a dark resolution of slander with

which he would tarnish her name, and wring the Preacher’s heart with

anguish.

CHAPTER XXI--WHY THE PREACHER THREW HIS LIFE AWAY

WHILE Mrs. Worth and Sallie were still in the North, the Rev. John

Durham received a unanimous call to the pastorate of one of the most

powerful Baptist churches in Boston, with a salary of five thousand

dollars a year. He was receiving a salary of nine hundred dollars at

Hambright, which could boast at most a population of two thousand. He

declined the call by return mail.

The committee were thunderstruck at this quick adverse decision, refused

to consider it final, and wrote him a long urgent letter of protest

against such ill-considered treatment. They urged that he must come to

Boston, and preach one Sunday, at least, in answer to their generous

offer, before rendering a final decision. He consented to do so, and

went to Boston. He sought Sallie the day after his arrival.

“Ah, my beautiful daughter of the South, it’s good to see you shining

here in the midst of the splendours of the Hub, the fairest of them

all!” he said shaking her hand feelingly.

“You mean pining, not shining,” she protested.

“That’s better still. I knew your heart was in the right place!”

“How is he, Doctor?” she asked.

“He’s trying to pull himself together with his work, and succeeding.

The shock of a great sorrow has steadied his nerves, broadened his

sympathies, and it will make him a man.”

A look of longing came over her face. “I don’t want him to be too strong

without me,” she faltered.

“Never fear. He’s so despondent at times I have to try to laugh him out

of countenance.”

She smiled and pressed his hand for answer as he rose to go.

“How do you like these Yankees, Miss Sallie?”

“I’ve been surprised and charmed beyond measure with everything I’ve

seen!”

“You don’t say so! How?”

“Well, I thought they were cold-blooded and inhospitable. I never made

a more foolish mistake. I have never been more at home, or been treated

more graciously in the South. To tell you the truth, they seem like

our most cultured people at home, warm-hearted, cordial, sensible and

neighbourly. Mama is so pleased she’s trying to claim kin with the

Puritans, through her Scotch Covenanter ancestry.”

“After all, I believe you are right. I never preached in my life to

so sensitive an audience. There’s an atmosphere of solid comfort, good

sense, and intelligence that holds me in a spell here. This is the place

in which I’ve dreamed I’d like to live and work.”

“Then you will accept, Doctor?”

“Now listen to you, child! Don’t you think I’ve a heart too? My brain

and body longs for such a home, but my heart’s down South with mine own

people who love and need me.”

The committee did their best to bring the Preacher to a favourable

decision at once, but he smiled a firm refusal. They refused to

report it to the church, and sent Deacon Crane, now a venerable man

of seventy-six, the warmest admirer of the Preacher among them all to

Hambright. They authorised him to make an amazing offer of salary, if

that would be any inducement, and they felt sure it would.

When the Deacon reached Hambright and saw its poverty and general air of

unimportance he felt encouraged.

“A man of such power stay a lifetime in this little hole! Impossible!”

he exclaimed under his breath, when he looked out of the bus along the

wide deserted looking streets with a straggling cottage here and there

on either side.

He stopped at the same hotel with the Preacher and became his shadow for

a week. He was seated with him under the oak in the square, threshing

over his argument for the hundredth time, in the most good-natured, but

everlastingly persistent way.

“Doctor, it’s perfect nonsense for a man of your magnificent talents, of

your culture and power over an audience, to think of living always in a

little village like this!”

“No, deacon, my work is here for the South.”

“But, my dear man, in Boston, it would be for the whole nation, North

and South. I ’ll tell you what we will do. Say you will come, and we

will make your salary eight thousand a year. That’s the largest salary

ever offered a Baptist preacher in America. You will pack our church

with people, give us new life, and we can afford it. You will be a power

in Boston, and a power in the world.”

The Preacher smiled and was silent. At length he said, “I appreciate

your offer, deacon. You pay me the highest compliment you know how to

express. But you prosperous Yankees can’t get into your heads the idea

that there are many things which money can’t measure.”

“But we know a good thing when we see it, and we go for it!” interrupted

the deacon.

“Believe me,” continued the Preacher, “I appreciate the sacrifice, the

generosity, and breadth of sympathy this offer shows in your hearts. But

it is not for me. My work is here. I don’t mind confessing to you that

you have vastly pleased me with that offer. I ’ll brag about it to

myself the rest of my life.”

“But Doctor, think how much greater power a generous salary will give

you in furnishing your equipment for work, and in ministering to any

cause you may have at heart,” pleaded the deacon.

“I don’t know. I have a salary of nine hundred dollars. With five

hundred I buy books,--food, clothes, shelter, the companionship for the

soul. The balance suffices for the body. I haven’t time to bother with

money. The man who receives a big salary must live up to its social

obligations, and he must pay for it with his life.”

“Doctor, there must be some tremendous force that holds you to such a

decision in a village. It seems to me you are throwing your life away.”

“There is a tremendous force, deacon. It is the overwhelming sense of

obligation I feel to my own people who have suffered so much, and are

still in the grip of poverty, and threatened with greater trials.

I can’t leave my own people while they are struggling yet with this

unsolved Negro problem. Two great questions shadow the future of

the American people, the conflict between Labor and Capital, and the

conflict between the African and the Anglo-Saxon race. The greatest,

most dangerous, and most hopeless of these, is the latter. My place is

here.”

The deacon laughed. “You’re a crank on that subject. Come to Boston and

you will see with a better perspective that the question is settling

itself. In fact the war absolutely settled it.”

“Deacon,” said the Preacher with a quizzical expression about his eyes,

“Do you believe in the doctrine of Election?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I thought so. You know, I never saw a man who believed in the doctrine

of Election who didn’t believe he was elected. I never saw a man in

my life, except a lying politician, who declared the Negro problem was

settled, unless he had removed his family to a place of fancied safety

where he would never come in contact with it. And they all believe that

the Negro’s place is in the South.”

The deacon laughed good-naturedly.

“Come with us, and we will show you greater problems. For one, the life

and death struggle of Christianity itself with modern materialism. I

tell you the Negro problem was settled when slavery was destroyed.”

“You never made a sadder mistake. The South did not fight to hold

slaves. Our Confederate government at Richmond offered to guarantee

to Europe, the freedom of every slave for the recognition of our

independence. Slavery was bound of its own weight to fall. Virginia came

within one vote in her assembly of freeing her slaves years before the

war. But for the frenzy of your Abolition fanatics who first sought to

destroy the Union by Secession, and then forced Secession on the South,

we would have freed the slaves before this without a war, from the very

necessities of the progress of the material world, to say nothing of

its moral progress. We fought for the rights we held under the old

constitution, made by a slave-holding aristocracy. But we collided with

the resistless movement of humanity from the idea of local sovereignty

toward nationalism, centralisation, solidarity.”

“That’s why I say,” interrupted the deacon, “your Negro question has

already been settled. The nation has become a reality not a name.”

“And that is why I know, deacon,” insisted the Preacher, “that we have

not only not settled this question,--we haven’t even faced the issues.

Nationality demands solidarity. And you can never get solidarity in a

nation of equal rights out of two hostile races that do not intermarry.

_In a Democracy you can not build a nation inside of a nation of two

antagonistic races, and therefore the future American must be either an

Anglo Saxon or a Mulatto_. And if a Mulatto, will the future be worth

discussing?”

“I never thought of it in just that way,” answered the deacon.

“It is my work to maintain the racial absolutism of the Anglo-Saxon in

the South, politically, socially, economically.”

“But can it be done? I see many evidences of a mixture of blood

already,” said the deacon seriously.

“Yes, we are doing it. This mixture you observe has no social

significance, for a simple reason. It is all the result of the surviving

polygamous and lawless instincts of the white male. Unless by the

gradual encroachments of time, culture, wealth and political exigencies,

the time comes that a negro shall be allowed freely to choose a white

woman for his wife, the racial integrity remains intact. The right to

choose one’s mate is the foundation of racial life and of civilisation.

The South must guard with flaming sword every avenue of approach to

this holy of holies. And there are many subtle forces at work to obscure

these possible approaches.”

“Well, no matter,” broke in the deacon, “come with us, and you will have

more power to touch with your ideas the wealth and virtue of the whole

nation.”

The Preacher was silent a moment and seemed to be musing in a sort

of half dream. The deacon looked at him with a growing sense of the

hopelessness of his task, but of surprise at this revelation of the

secrets of his inner life.

“The South has been voiceless in these later years,” he went on, “her

voice has been drowned in a din of cat-calls from an army of cheap

scribblers and demagogues. But when these children we are rearing down

here grow, rocked in their cradles of poverty, nurtured in the fierce

struggle to save the life of a mighty race, they will find speech, and

their songs will fill the world with pathos and power.

“I’ve studied your great cities. Believe me the South is worth saving.

Against the possible day when a flood of foreign anarchy threatens the

foundations of the Republic and men shall laugh at the faiths of your

fathers, and undigested wealth beyond the dreams of avarice rots your

society, until it mocks at honour, love and God--against that day we

will preserve the South!”

The Preacher’s voice was now vibrating with deep feeling, and the deacon

listened with breathless interest.

“Believe me, deacon, the ark of the covenant of American ideals rests

to-day on the Appalachian Mountain range of the South. When your

metropolitan mobs shall knock at the doors of your life and demand the

reason of your existence, from these poverty-stricken homes, with their

old-fashioned, perhaps mediaeval ideas, will come forth the fierce

athletic sons and sweet-voiced daughters in whom the nation will find

a new birth!” The Preacher’s eyes had filled with tears and his voice

dropped into a low dream-like prophecy.

“You can not understand,” he resumed, in a clear voice, “why I feel so

profoundly depressed just now because the Republican party, which, with

you stands for the virtue, wealth and intelligence of the community,

is now in charge of this state. I will tell you why. A Republican

administration in North Carolina simply means a Negro oligarchy. The

state is now being debauched and degraded by this fact in the innermost

depths of its character and life. My place is here in this fight.”

“But, Doctor, will not your industrial training of the Negro gradually

minimise any danger to your society?”

“No, it will gradually increase it. Industrial training gives power. If

the Negro ever becomes a serious competitor of the white labourer in

the industries of the South, the white man will kill him, just as your

labour Unions do in the North now where the conditions of life are hard,

and men fight with tooth and nail for bread. If you train the negroes to

be scientific farmers they will become a race of aristocrats, and when

five generations removed from the memory of slavery, a war of races will

be inevitable, unless the Anglo-Saxon grant this trained and wealthy

African equal social rights. The Anglo-Saxon can not do this without

suicide. One drop of Negro blood makes a negro.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Doctor, that I can’t persuade you to

become our pastor. But I can understand since this talk something of the

larger views of your duty.”

The deacon sought Mrs. Durham that evening and laid siege to her

resolutely.

“Ah! deacon, you’re shrewd--you are going to flatter me, but I can’t let

you. I’m an old fogy and out of date. I’m not orthodox on the Negro from

Boston’s point of view.”

“Nonsense!” growled the deacon. “We don’t care what you or the Doctor

either thinks about the Negro, or the Jap, or the Chinaman. We want a

preacher imbued with the power of the Holy Ghost to preach the Gospel of

Christ.”

“Well, you have quite captured me since you have been here. You are a

revelation to me of what a deacon might be to a pastor and his wife. To

be frank with you, I am on your side. I am tired of the Negro. I don’t

want to solve him. He is an impossible job from my point of view. I

should be delighted to go to Boston now and begin life over again. But

I do not figure in the decision. Dr. Durham settles such questions for

himself. And I respect him more for it.”

Encouraged by this decision of his wife the deacon renewed his efforts

to change the Preacher’s mind next day in vain. He stayed over Sunday,

heard him preach two sermons, and sorrowfully bade him good-bye on

Monday. He carried back to Boston his final word declining this call.

As the deacon stepped on the train, he warmly pressed his hand and said,

“God bless you, Doctor. If you ever need a friend, you know my name and

address.”

CHAPTER XXII--THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT

GASTON tried to wait in patience another week for a word from the woman

he loved, and when the last mail came and brought no letter for him, he

found himself face to face with the deepest soul crisis of his life.

After all, thoughts are things. The report of her social frivolities at

first made little impression on him. But the thought had fallen in his

heart, and it was growing a poisoned weed.

It is possible to kill the human body with an idea. The fairest day the

spring ever sent can be blackened and turned from sunshine into storm by

the flitting of a little cloud of thought no bigger than a man’s hand.

So Gaston found this report of dancing and flirting in a gay society by

the woman whom he had enthroned in the holy of holies of his soul to be

destroying his strength of character, and like a deadly cancer eating

his heart out.

He sat down by his window that night, unable to work, and tried to

reconcile such a life with his ideal.

“Why should I be so provincial!” he mused. “The thing only shocks me

because I am unused to it. She has grown up in this atmosphere. To her

it is a harmless pastime.”

Then he took out of his desk her picture, lit his lamp and looked long

and tenderly at it, until his soul was drunk again with the memory of

her beauty, the warm touch of her hand, and the thrill of her full soft

lips in the only two kisses he had ever received from the heart of a

woman.

Then, the vision of a ball-room came to torture him. He could see her

dressed in that delicate creation of French genius he had seen her wear

the memorable night at the Springs. The French know so deeply the subtle

art of draping a woman’s body to tempt the souls of men. How he cursed

them to-night! He could see her bare arms, white gleaming shoulders,

neck, and back, and round full bosom softly rising and falling with her

breathing, as she swept through a brilliant ball-room to the strains of

entrancing music.

He knew the dance was a social convention, of course. But its deep

Nature significance he knew also. He knew that it was as old as human

society, and full of a thousand subtle suggestions,--that it was the

actual touch of the human body, with rhythmic movement, set to the

passionate music of love. This music spoke in quivering melody what

the lips did not dare to say. This he knew was the deep secret of the

fascination of the dance for the boy and the girl, the man and the

woman. How he cursed it to-night!

His imagination leaped the centuries that separate us from the great

races of the past who scorned humbug and hypocrisy, and held their

dances in the deep shadows of great forests, without the draperies of

tailors. These men and women looked Nature in the face and were not

afraid, and did not try to apologise or lie about it. He felt humiliated

and betrayed.

He thought too of her wealth with a feeling of resentment and isolation.

Taken with this social nightmare it seemed to raise an impossible

barrier between them. He knew that in the terrible quarrel she had with

her father on their first clash, he had sworn if she disobeyed him to

disinherit her. She had answered him in bitter defiance. And yet time

often changes these noble visions of poverty and strenuous faith in high

ideals. Wealth and all its good things becomes with us at last habit.

And habit is life.

Could it be possible she had weakened in resolution of loyalty when

brought face to face with the actual breaking of the habits of a

lifetime? Might not the three forces combined, the habit of social

conventions, the habit of luxury, and the habit of obedience to a

masterful and lovable father, be sufficient to crush her love at

last? It seemed to him to-night, not only a possibility, but almost an

accomplished fact.

At one o’clock he went to bed and tried to sleep. He tossed for an hour.

His brain was on fire, and his imagination lit with its glare. He could

sweep the world with his vision in the silence and the darkness. Yes,

the world that is, and that which was, and is to come!

He arose and dressed. It was half-past two o’clock. He knew that this

was to be the first night in all his life when he could not sleep. He

was shocked and sobered by the tremendous import of such an event in

the development of his character. He had never been swept off his feet

before. He knew now that before the sun rose he would fight with the

powers and princes of the air for the mastery of life.

He left his room and walked out on the road to the Springs over which he

had gone so many times in childhood. The moon was obscured by fleeting

clouds, and the air had the sharp touch of autumn in its breath. He

walked slowly past the darkened silent houses and felt his brain begin

to cool in the sweet air.

The last note he had received from her weeks ago was the brief one

announcing the new break in the poor little correspondence she had

promised him. The last paragraph of that note now took on a sinister

meaning. He recalled it word by word:

“I feel like I can not trifle with you in this way again. It is

humiliating to me and to you. I can see no light in our future. I

release you from any tie I may have imposed on your life. I feel I

have fallen short of what you deserve, but I am so situated between my

mother’s failing health and my father’s will, and my love for them both,

I can not help it. I will love you always, but you are free.”

Was not this a kindly and final breaking of their pledge to one another?

Yet she had not returned the little medal he had given her with that

exchange of eternal love and faith. Could she keep this and really mean

to break with him finally? He could not believe it.

His whole life had been dominated by this dream of an ideal love. For it

he had denied himself the indulgences that his college mates and young

associates had taken as a matter of course. He had never touched wine.

He had never smoked. He had never learned the difference between a queen

and jack in cards. He had kept away from women. He had given his body

and soul to the service of his Ideal, and bent every energy to the

development of his mind that he might grasp with more power its

sweetness and beauty when realised.

Did it pay? The Flesh was shrieking this question now into the face of

the Spirit?

He had met the One Woman his soul had desired above all others. There

could be no mistake about that. And now she was failing him when he had

laid at her feet his life. It made him sick to recall how utter had been

his surrender.

Why should he longer deny the flesh, when the soul’s dream failed the

test of pain and struggle?

Was it possible that he had been a fool and was missing the full

expression of life, which is both flesh and spirit?

The world was full of sweet odours. He had delicate and powerful

nostrils. Why not enjoy them? The world was full of beauty ravishing

to the eye. He had keen eyes trained to see. Why should he not open his

eyes and gaze on it all? The world was full of entrancing music. He had

ears trained to hear. Why should he stuff them with dreams of a doubtful

future, and not hear it all? The world was full of things soft and good

to the touch. Why should he not grasp them? His hands were cunning, and

every finger tingled with sensitive nerve tips. The world was full

of good things sweet to the taste, why should he not eat and drink as

others, as old and wise perhaps?

Was a man full-grown until he had seen, felt, smelled, tasted, and

heard all life? Was there anything after all, in good or bad? Were these

things not names? If not, how could we know unless we tried them? What

was the good of good things?

“Am I not a narrow-minded fool, instead of a wise man, to throttle my

impulses and deny the flesh for an imaginary gain?” he asked himself

aloud.

She had written he was free.

“Well, by the eternal, I will be free!” he exclaimed, “I will sweep the

whole gamut of human passion and human emotion. I will drink life to the

deepest dregs of its red wine. I will taste, feel, see, touch, hear all!

I will not be cheated. I will know for myself what it is to live.”

When he woke to the consciousness of time and place, he found he was

seated at the Sulphur Spring where it gushed from the foot of the hill,

and that the eastern horizon was grey with the dawn.

A sense of new-found power welled up in him. He had regained control of

himself.

“Good! I will no longer be a moping love-sick fool. I am a man. To will

is to live, to cease to will is to die. I have regained my will,--I

live!”

He walked rapidly back to town with vigourous step. His mind was clear.

“I will never write her another line until she writes to me. I will not

be a dog and whine at any rich man’s door or any woman’s feet. The world

is large, and I am large. I will be sought as well as seek. Besides, my

country needs me. If I am to give myself it will be for larger ends than

for the smiles of one woman!”

And then for two weeks he entered deliberately on a series of

dissipations. He left Hambright and sought convivial friends on the sea

coast. He amazed them by asking to be taught cards.

He swept the gamut of all the senses without reserve, day after day, and

night after night.

At the end of two weeks he found himself haunting the post-office

oftener, with a vague sense of impending calamity.

“The thing’s all over I tell you!” he said to himself again and again.

And then he would hurry to the next mail as eagerly as ever. As the

excitement began to tire him, the sense of longing for her face, and

voice, and the touch of her hand became intolerable.

“My God, I’d give all the world holds of sin to see her and hear one

word from her lips!” he exclaimed as he locked himself in his room one

night.

“Why didn’t she answer my last letter?” he continued. “Ah, that was

the best letter I ever wrote her. I put my soul in every word. I didn’t

believe the woman lived who could read such confessions and such worship

without reply; Surely she has a heart!”

When he went to the post-office next day he got a letter forwarded from

Hambright by the Preacher. It was postmarked Narragansett Pier, and

addressed in a bold masculine hand he had never seen before.

He tore it open, and inside found his last letter to Sallie Worth,

returned with the seal unbroken. He sprang to his feet with flashing

eyes, trembling from head to foot.

“Ah! they did not dare to let her receive another of my letters! So a

clerk returns it unopened,” he cried.

And a great lump rose in his throat as he thought of the scenes of the

past two weeks. The old fever and the old longing came rushing over

his prostrate soul now in resistless torrents: “How dare a strange hand

touch a message to her! I could strangle him. We will see now who wins

the fight.” He set his lips with determination, packed his valise, and

took the train for home without a word of farewell to the companions of

his revels.

When he reached Hambright he felt sure of a letter from her. A strange

joy filled his heart.

“I have either got a letter or she’s writing one to me this minute!” he

exclaimed.

He went to the post-office in a state of exhilaration. The letter was

not there. But it did not depress him.

“It is on the way,” he quickly said.

For two days, he remained in that condition of tense nervous excitement

and expectation, and on the following day he opened his box and found

his letter.

“I knew it!” he said with a thrill of joy that was half awe at the

remarkable confirmation he had received of their sympathy.

He hurried to his office and read the big precious message.

How its words burned into his soul! Every line seemed alive with her

spirit. How beautiful the sight of her handwriting! He kissed it again

and again. He read with bated breath. The address was double expressive,

because it contained the first words of abandoned tenderness with which

she had ever written to him, except in the concealed message dotted in

the note that broke their earlier correspondence.

“My Precious Darling:--I have gone through deep waters within the last

three weeks. I became so depressed and hungry to see you, I felt some

awful calamity was hanging over you and over me, and that it was my

fault. I could scarcely eat or sleep.

“I felt I should go mad if I did not speak and so I told Mama. She

sympathised tenderly with me but insisted I should not write. She is so

feeble I could not cross her. But Oh! the agony of it! Sometimes I saw

you drowning and stretching out your hands to me for help.

“Sometimes in my dreams I saw you fighting against overwhelming odds with

strong brutal men, whose faces were full of hate, and I could not reach

you.

“I was nervous and unstrung, but you can never know how real the horror

of it all was upon me.

“I made up my mind one night to telegraph you. I heard some one talking

inside Mama’s room. I gently opened the door between our rooms, and she

was praying aloud for me. I stood spellbound. I never knew how she loved

me before. When at last she prayed that in the end I might have the

desire of my heart, and my life be crowned with the joy of a noble man’s

love, and that it might be yours, and that she should be permitted to

see and rejoice with me, I could endure it no longer.

“Choking with sobs I ran to her kneeling figure, threw my arms around her

neck and covered her dear face with kisses.

“I could not send the message I had written after that scene.

“The next day Papa came, and she told him in my presence, ‘Now, General I

have carried out your wishes with Sallie against my judgment. The strain

has been more than you can understand. I give up the task. You can

manage her now to suit yourself.’

“There was a firmness in her voice I had never heard before. He noted

it, and was startled into silence by it. He had a long talk with me and

repeated his orders with increasing emphasis.

“The next day I was unusually depressed. I did not get out of bed all

day. At night I went down to supper. The clerk at the desk of the hotel

called me and said, ‘Miss Worth, I have a terrible sin to confess to

you. I’m a lover myself, and I’ve done you a wrong. I returned to a

young man yesterday a letter to you by request of the General. Forgive

me for it, and don’t tell him I told you.’

“That night Papa and I had a fearful scene. I will not attempt to

describe it. But the end was, I said to him with all the courage of

despair: I am twenty-one years old. I am a free woman. I will write to

whom I please and when I please and I will not ask you again. It is your

right to turn me out of your house, but you shall not murder my soul!

“Then for the first time in his life Papa broke down and sobbed like a

child. We kissed and made up, and I am to write to you when I like.

“Forgive my long silence. Write and tell me you love me. My heart is sick

with the thought that I have been cowardly and failed you. Write me a

long letter, and you can not say things extravagant enough for my hungry

heart.

“I feel utterly helpless when I think how completely you have come to

rule my life. I wish you to rule it. It is all yours”----

And then she said many little foolish things that only the eyes of the

one lover should ever see, for only to him could they have meaning.

When he finished reading this letter, and had devoured with eagerness

these foolish extravagances with which she closed it, he buried his face

in his arms across his desk.

A big strong boastful man whose will had defied the world! Now he was

crying like a whipped child.

BOOK THREE--THE THE TRIAL BY FIRE

CHAPTER I--A GROWL BENEATH THE EARTH

APPARENTLY McLeod’s triumph was complete and permanent. The farmers

were disappointed in their wild hopes of a sub-treasury, and other

socialistic schemes, but the passions of the campaign had been violent,

and the offices they had won with their Negro ally had been soothing to

their sense of pride.

A Republican farmer was Governor for a term of four years, they had

elected two Senators, and three Supreme Court judges, and they had

completely smashed the power of the Democratic party in the county

governments. Everywhere they were triumphant in the local elections,

filling almost every county office with heavy-handed sons of toil from

the country districts, and making the town fops who had been drawing

these fat salaries get out and work for a living.

Even McLeod was amazed at the thoroughness with which they cleaned the

state of every vestige of the invincible Democracy that had ruled with a

rod of iron since Legree’s flight.

Gaston could see but one weak spot in the alliance. The negroes had

demanded their share of the spoils, and were gradually forcing their

reluctant allies to grant them. He watched the progress of this movement

with thrilling interest. The negroes had demanded the repeal of the

county government plan of the Democracy, under which the credit of the

forty black counties had been rescued from bankruptcy at the expense of

local selfgovernment.

When the lawmakers who succeeded Legree had put this scheme of

centralised power in force, these forty counties were immediately lifted

from ruin to prosperity. But no negro ever held another office in them.

Now the negroes demanded the return to the principles of pure Democracy

and the right to elect all town, township, and county officers direct.

They got their demands. They took charge in short order of the great

rich counties in the Black Belt, and white men ceased to hold the

offices.

A negro college-graduate from Miss Walker’s classical institution had

started a newspaper at Independence noted for its open demands for the

recognition of the economic, social and political equality of the races.

Young negro men and women walking the streets now refused to give half

the sidewalk to a white man or woman when they met, and there were an

increasing number of fights from such causes.

Gaston noted these signs with a growing sense of their import, and began

his work for the second great campaign. The election for a legislature

alone, he knew was lost already. His party had simply abandoned the

fight. The Allied Party had passed new election laws, and under the

tutelage of the doubtful methods of the past they had taken every

partisan advantage possible within the limits of the Constitution. They

could not be overthrown short of a political earthquake, and he knew it.

But he thought he heard in the depths of the earth the low rumble of its

coming, and he began to prepare for it.

CHAPTER II--FACE TO FACE WITH FATE

THREE weeks before Christmas Gaston began to dream of the visit he was

to make to Independence to see Sallie Worth. How long it seemed since

she had kissed him in the twilight of that Pullman car and the Limited

had rolled away bearing her further and further from his life! He would

sit now for an hour reading her last letter, looking at her picture on

his desk, and dreaming of what she would say when he sat by her side

again in her own home.

And then like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky came a tearful letter

announcing another storm at home. Her father had again forbidden her

to write. She said, at the last, that Gaston’s visit must be postponed

indefinitely for the present. He gazed at the letter with a hardened

look.

“I _will_ go. I ’ll face General Worth in his own home, and demand his

reasons for such treatment. I am a man I am entitled to the respect of

a man.” He made this declaration with a quiet force that left no doubt

about his doing it.

He wrote Sallie that he could not and would not endure such a fight in

the dark with the General, and that he was going to Independence on the

day before Christmas as she had planned at first, to have it out with

him face to face.

She wrote in reply and begged him under no circumstances to come until

conditions were more favourable. He got this letter the day before he

was to start.

“I ’ll go and I ’ll see him if I have to fight my way into his

house, that’s all there is to it!” he exclaimed.

When he reached Independence, St. Clare met him at the depot, and gave

him an eager welcome.

“I’ve been expecting you, you hard-headed fool!” he said impulsively.

“Well, your words are not equal to your handshake. What’s the matter?”

asked Gaston.

“You know what’s the matter. Miss Sallie has been to see me this

afternoon, and begged me to chain you at my house if you came to town

to-day.”

“Well, you ’ll need handcuffs, and help to get them on,” replied

Gaston with quiet decision.

“Look here, old boy, you’re not going down to that house to-night with

the old man threatening to kill you on sight, and your girl bordering on

collapse!”

“I am. I’ve been bordering on collapse for some time myself. I’m getting

used to it.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Granted, but I ’ll risk it.”

“But, man, I tell you Miss Sallie will be furious with you if you go

after all the messages she has sent you.”

“I ’ll risk her fury too.”

“Gaston, let me beg you not to do it.”

“I’m going, Bob. It isn’t any use for you to waste your breath.”

“You know where my heart is, old chum,” said Bob, yielding reluctantly.

“I couldn’t go down to that house to-night under the conditions you are

going for the world.”

“Why not? It’s the manly thing to do.”

“It’s a dangerous thing to do. Fathers have killed men under such

conditions.”

“Well, I ’ll risk it. I’m going as soon as I can brush up a little.”

Bob walked with him to the outskirts of the city, begging in vain that

he should turn back, but he never slacked his pace.

When he turned to go home, Bob pressed his hand and said “Good luck. And

may your shadow never grow less.”

Gaston walked rapidly on toward Oakwood. As he passed through the

shadows of the forest near the gate, a flood of tender memories rushed

over him. He was back again by her side on that morning he met her, with

the first flush of love thrilling his life. He could see her looking

earnestly at him as though trying to solve a riddle. He could hear her

laughter full of joy and happiness. As he turned into the gateway the

house flashed on him its gleaming windows from the hill top. He felt

his heart sink with bitterness as he realised the contrast of his last

entrance into that house, its welcomed guest, and his present unbidden

intrusion. Once those lights had gleamed only a message of peace and

love. Now they seemed signals of war some enemy had set on the hill to

warn of his approach.

He paused a moment and wiped the perspiration from his brow. It was

Christmas eve, but the air was balmy and spring-like and his rapid walk

had tired him. He had eaten nothing all day, had slept only a few hours

the night before, and the nerve strain had been more than he knew.

He looked up at the great white pillars softly shining in the starlight,

and a sickening fear of a possible tragedy behind those doors crept over

him.

“My God!” he exclaimed, “I had rather charge a breastworks in the face

of flashing guns than to go into that house to-night and meet one man!”

He recognised the breach of the finer amenities of life involved in

forcing his way into a home under such conditions, and it humiliated him

for a moment.

“We will not stickle for forms now,” he said to himself firmly. “This

is war. I am to uncover the batteries of my enemy. I have hesitated long

enough. I will not fight in the dark another day.”

As he stepped briskly up to the door, he started at a sudden thought.

What if the General had ordered the servants to slam the door in his

face! The possibility of such an unforeseen insult made the cold sweat

break out over his face as he rang the bell. No matter, he was in for it

now, he would face hell if need be!

He waited but an instant, and heard the heavy tread of a man approach

the door. Instinctively he knew that the General himself was on guard,

and would open the door. Evidently he had expected him.

The door opened about two feet and the General glared at him livid with

rage. He held one hand on the door and the other on its facing, and his

towering figure filled the space.

“Good evening, General!” said Gaston with embarrassment.

“What do you want, sir?” he growled.

“I wish to see you for a few minutes.”

“Well, I don’t want to see you.”

“Whether you wish to or not, you must do it sooner of later,” answered

Gaston with dignity.

“Indeed! Your insolence is sublime, I must say!”

“The sooner you and I have a plain talk the better for both of us. It

can’t be put off any longer,” Gaston continued with self control. He

was looking the General straight in the eyes now, with head and broad

shoulders erect and his square-cut jaws were snapping his words with a

clean emphasis that was not lost on the older master of men before him.

“Call at my office in the morning at ten o’clock.” he said, at length.

“I will not do it. I am going home on the nine o’clock train. To-morrow

is Christmas day. The issue between us is of life import to me, and it

may be of equal importance to you. I will not put it off another hour!”

The General glared at him. His hands began to tremble, and raising his

voice, he thundered, “I am not accustomed to take orders from young

upstarts. How dare you attempt to force yourself into my house when you

were told again and again not to attempt it, sir?”

“Your former welcome to me on three occasions when the object of my

visits was as well known to you as to me, gives me, at least, the vested

rights of a final interview. I demand it,” retorted Gaston curtly.

“And I refuse it!” Still there was a note of indecision in his voice

which Gaston was quick to catch.

“General,” he protested, “you are a soldier and a gentleman. You never

fought an enemy with uncivilised warfare. Yet you have allowed some one

under your protection to stab me in the dark for the past year. I am

entitled to know why I fight and against whom. I ask your sense of

fairness as a soldier if I am not right?”

The General hesitated, and finally said, as he opened the door, “Walk

into the parlour.”

When they were seated, Gaston plunged immediately into the question he

had at heart.

“Now, General, I wish to ask you plainly why you have treated me as you

have since I asked you for your daughter’s hand?”

“The less said about it, the better. I have good and sufficient reasons,

and that settles it.”

“But I have the right to know them.”

“What right?”

“The right of every man to face his accuser when on trial for his life.”

“Bah! men don’t die nowadays for love, or women either,” the General

growled.

“Besides,” continued Gaston, “you are under the deepest obligations to

tell me fairly your reasons.”

“Obligations?”

“The obligations of the commonest justice between man and man. You

invited me to your home. I was your welcome guest. You encouraged my

suit for your daughter’s hand.”

“How dare you say such a thing, sir!”

“Because she told me you did. I was led to believe that you not only

looked with favour on my suit, but that you were pleased with it.

I asked for your daughter. You insulted my manhood by refusing me

permission even to seek an interview, and know the reasons for your

change of views. Since then you have treated me with plain brutality.

Now something caused this change.”

“Certainly something caused it, something of tremendous importance,”

said the General.

“I am entitled to know what it is.”

“Simply this. I received information concerning you, your habits, your

associates, your character, and your family, that caused me to change my

mind.”

“Did you inquire as to their truth?”

“It was unnecessary. I love my daughter beyond all other treasures I

possess. With her future I will take no risks.”

“I have the right to know the charges, General,” insisted Gaston. “I

demand it.”

“Well, sir, if you demand it, you will get it. I learned that you are

a man of the most dissolute habits and character, that you are a hard

drinker, a gambler, a rake and a spendthrift, and that your family’s

history is a deplorable one.”

“My family history a deplorable one!” cried Gaston, springing to his

feet, with trembling clinched fists and scarlet face on which the blue

veins suddenly stood out.

“I begged you to spare me and yourself the pain of this,” replied the

General in a softer voice.

“No, I do not ask to be spared. Give me the particulars. What is the

stain on my family name?”

“Not a moral one, but in some respects more hopeless, a physical one. I

have positive information that your people on one side are what is known

in the South as poor white trash--”

Gaston smiled. “I thank you, General, for your frankness. The only wrong

of which I complain, is your withholding the name of the liar.”

“There is no use of a fight over such things. I do not wish my

daughter’s name to be smirched with it.”

“Her name is as dear to me as it can possibly be to you. Never fear. You

are her father, I honour you as such. I thank you for the information. I

scorn to stoop to answer. The humour of it forbids an answer if I could

stoop to make one. Now, General, I make you this proposition. I am not

in a hurry. I will patiently wait any time you see fit to set for any

developments in my life and character about which you have doubts. All

I ask is the privilege of writing to the woman I love. Is not this

reasonable?”

“No, sir,” declared the General, “I will not have it. You are not in

a position to make me a proposition of any sort. I have settled this

affair. It is not open for discussion.”

“You mean to say that I have no standing whatever in the case?” asked

Gaston with a smile, rubbing his hand over his smooth shaved lips and

chin.

“Exactly. I’ve settled it. There’s nothing more to be said.”

“I ’ll never give her up. She is the one woman God made for me, and

you will have to put me under the ground before you have settled my end

of it,” said Gaston still smiling.

The old man’s face clouded for a moment, he wrinkled his brow, drew his

bushy eyebrows closer and then turned toward Gaston in a persuasive way.

“Look here, Gaston, don’t be a fool. It’s amusing to me to hear a

youngster talk such drivel. Love is not a fatal disease for a man, or a

woman. You will find that out later if you don’t know it now. I loved

a half dozen girls, and when I got ready to marry, I asked the one

handiest, and that seemed most suited to my temper. We married and have

lived as happily as the romancers. The world is full of pretty girls. Go

on about your business, and quit bothering me and mine.”

“There’s only one girl for me, General!”

“That’s proof positive to my mind that you are a little cracked!” he

answered with a smile.

Gaston laughed and shook his head. “I ’ll never give her up in this

world, or the next,” he doggedly added.

Again the General frowned. “Look here, young man, did it ever occur to

you that your pursuit might be held the work of a low adventurer? My

daughter is an heiress. You haven’t’ a dollar. Don’t you know that I

will disinherit her if she marries without my consent?”

“You can’t frighten me on that tack,” answered Gaston firmly. “No dollar

mark has yet been placed on the doors of Southern society. Manhood,

character and achievement are the keys that unlock it. You know that,

and I now it. I was poorer and more obscure the day you first invited me

here than to-day. And yet you gave me as hearty a welcome as her richest

suitor. All I ask is time to prove to you in my life my manhood and

worth,--one year, two years, five years, ten years, any time you see fit

to name.”

“No, sir,” firmly snapped the General, “not a day. I don’t like long

engagements. Yours is ended, once and for all time. I have settled

that.”

“Can even a father decide the destiny of two immortal souls off hand

like that?”

“Now, you are assuming too much. I am not speaking for myself alone. I

have laid all the facts carefully before Sallie, and she has agreed to

the wisdom of my decision, and asked me to represent her in what I say

this evening.”

Gaston turned pale, his lips quivered, and turning to the General

suddenly, he said, “That is the only important fact you have laid before

me. Just let her come here, stand by your side and say that with her own

lips, and I will never cross your path in life again.”

The General hung his head and stammered, “No, it is not necessary. It

will embarrass and humiliate her. I will not permit it.”

“Then I deny your credentials!” exclaimed Gaston.

The General seemed embarrassed by the failure of this fatherly

subterfuge, and Gaston could not help smiling at the revelation of his

weakness. He decided to press his advantage and try to see her if only

for a moment.

“General,” protested Gaston persuasively, “I appeal to your sense of

courtesy, even to an enemy. After all that has passed between us in this

house, is it fair or courteous to show me that door without one word of

farewell to the woman to whom I have given my life? Or is it wise from

your point of view?”

Again the General hesitated. He was a big-hearted man of generous

impulses, and he felt worsted in this interview somehow, but it was hard

to deny such a request. He fumbled at his watch chain, arose, and said,

“I will see if she desires it.”

Gaston’s heart bounded with joy! If she desired it! He could feel her

soul enveloping him with its love as he sat there conscious that she was

somewhere in that house praying for him!

He fairly choked with the pain and the joy of the certainty that in a

moment he would be near her, touch her hand, see her glorious beauty and

his ears drink the music of her voice.

“Just step this way,” said the General, re-appearing at the door.

Gaston walked into the hall and met Sallie as she emerged from the

library door opposite. He tried to say something, but his throat was dry

and his tongue paralysed with the wonder of her presence! Besides, the

General stood grimly by like a guard over a life prisoner.

He looked searchingly into her eyes as he held her hand for a moment

and felt its warm impulsive pressure. Oh! the eyes of the woman we love!

What are words to their language of melting tenderness, of faith and

longing. Gaston felt like shouting in the General’s face his triumph.

She tried to speak, but only pressed his hand again. It was enough.

He bowed to the General, and left without a word.

CHAPTER III--A WHITE LIE

THAT night as he walked back through the streets he was thrilled with

a sense of strength and of triumph. He knew his ground now. There was to

be war between him and the General to the bitter end. He had never asked

her once to oppose her father’s or mother’s command. Now he would see

who was master in a test of strength. And he was eager for the struggle.

His mind was alert, and every nerve and muscle tense with energy.

“Heavens, how hungry I am!” he exclaimed when he reached the brilliantly

lighted business portion of the city.

He went into a restaurant, ordered a steak, and enjoyed a good meal. He

recalled then that he had not eaten for twenty-four hours. The steak was

good, and the faces of the people seemed to him lit with gladness. He

was singing a battle song in his soul, and the eyes of the woman he

loved looked at him with yearning tenderness.

“Now, Bob, I count on you,” he cried to his friend next morning. “I am

going to have a merry Christmas and you are to aid in the skirmishing.”

“I’m with you to the finish!” Bob responded with enthusiasm.

“We must make a feint this morning to deceive the enemy while I turn his

flank. I go home on the nine o’clock train. You understand?”

“Yes, over the left. It’s dead easy too. There’s to be a big Christmas

party to-night at the Alexanders’. She’s invited. I ’ll see that she

goes to it if I have to drag her.”

“Good. Don’t tell her I’m in town. I want to surprise her.”

The General had a man at the morning train who reported Gaston’s

departure. He was surprised at Sallie’s good spirits but attributed it

to the magnificent present he had given her that morning of a diamond

ring and an exquisite pearl necklace.

He bustled her off to the party that night and congratulated himself on

the certainty of his triumph over an aspiring youngster who dared to set

his will against his own.

When the festivities had begun, and the children were busy with their

fireworks, Sallie strolled along the winding walks of the big lawn. She

was chatting with Bob St. Clare about a young man they both knew, and

when they reached the corner furthest from the house, under the shadows

of a great magnolia with low overhanging boughs she saw the figure of a

man.

She smiled into Bob’s face, pressed his hand and said, “Now, Bob you’ve

done all a good friend could do. Go back. I don’t need you.”

And Bob answered with a smile and left her. In a moment Gaston was by

her side with both her hands in his kissing them tenderly.

“Didn’t I surprise you, dear?” he softly asked.

“No. Bob denied you were here, but I knew it was a story. I was sure you

would never leave without seeing me. You couldn’t, could you?”

“Not after what I saw in your eyes last night!” He whispered.

“It seems a century since I’ve heard your voice,” she said wistfully.

“God alone knows what I have suffered, and I am growing weary of it.”

“Do you think I have been treated fairly?” he asked.

“No, I do not”

“Then you will write to me?”

“Yes. I will not starve my heart any longer.” And she pressed his hand.

“You have made the world glorious again! When will you marry me,

Sallie?” he bent his face close to her, and for an answer she tenderly

kissed him.

They stood in silence a moment with clasped hands, and then she said

slowly, “You didn’t want your freedom did you, dear? That’s the third

kiss, isn’t it? I wonder if kissing will be always as sweet! But you

asked me when we can marry? I can’t tell now. I can do nothing to shock

Mama. She seems to draw closer and closer to me every day. And now that

I have determined no power shall separate us, it seems more and more

necessary that I shall win Papa’s consent. He loves me dearly. I feel

that I must have his blessing on our lives. Give me time. I hope to win

him.”

“And you will never let another week pass without writing to me?”

“Never. Send my letters to Bob. He loves you better than he ever thought

he loved me. He will give them to me on Sundays at church, and when he

calls.”

For two hours the kindly mantle of the magnolia sheltered them while

they told the old sweet story over and over again. And somehow that

night it seemed to them sweeter each time it was told.

CHAPTER IV--THE UNSPOKEN TERROR

WHEN Gaston reached Hambright the following day, and whispered to his

mother the good news, he hastened to tell his friend Tom Camp. The young

man’s heart warmed toward the white-haired old soldier in this hour of

his victory. With sparkling eyes, he told Tom of his stormy scene with

the General, of its curious ending, and the hours he spent in heaven

beneath the limbs of an old magnolia.

[Illustration: 0396]

Tom listened with rapture. “Ah, didn’t I tell you, if you hung on you’d

get her by-and-by? So you bearded the General in his den did you? I

’ll bet his eyes blazed when he seed you! He’s got an awful temper

when you rile him. You ought to a seed him one day when our brigade was

ordered into a charge where three concealed batteries was cross firin’

and men was failin’ like wheat under the knife. Geeminy but didn’t he

cuss! He wouldn’t take the order fust from the orderly, and sent to know

if the Major-General meant it. I tell you us fellers that was layin’

there in the grass listenin’ to them bullets singin’ thought he was the

finest cusser that ever ripped an oath.

“He reared and he charged, and he cussed, and He damned that man for

tryin’ to butcher his men, and he never moved till the third order came.

That was the night ten thousand wounded men lay on the field, and me in

the middle of ’em with a Minie ball in my shoulder. The Yankees and

our men was all mixed up together, and just after dark the full moon

came up through the trees and you could see as plain as day. I begun to

sing the old hymn, ‘There is a land of pure delight,’ and you ought to

have heard them ten thousand wounded men sing!

“While we was singing the General came through lookin’ up his men. He

seed me and said, ‘Is that you, Tom Camp?’

“I looked up at him, and he was crying like a child, and he went on from

man to man cryin’ and cussin the fool that sent us into that hell-hole.

The General’s a rough man, if you rub his fur the wrong way, but his

heart’s all right. He’s all gold I tell you!”

“Well, I’m in for a tussle with him, Tom.”

“Shucks, man, you can beat him with one hand tied behind you if you’ve

got his gal’s heart. She’s got his fire, and a gal as purty as she is

can just about do what she pleases in this world.”

“I hope she can bring him around. I like the General. I’d much rather

not fight him.”

“Where’s Flora?” cried Tom looking around in alarm.

“I saw her going toward the spring in the edge of the woods there a

minute ago,” replied Gaston.

Tom sprang up and began to hop and jump down the path toward the spring

with incredible rapidity.

Flora was playing in the branch below the spring and Tom saw the form of

a negro man passing over the opposite hill going along the spring path

that led in that direction.

“Was you talkin’ with that nigger, Flora?” asked Tom holding his hand on

his side and trying to recover his breath.

“Yes, I said howdy, when he stopped to get a drink of water, and he give

me a whistle,” she replied with a pout of her pretty lips and a frown.

Tom seized her by the arm and shook her. “Didn’t I tell you to run every

time you seed a nigger unless I was with you!”

“Yes, but he wasn’t hurtin’ me and you are!” she cried bursting into

tears.

“I’ve a notion to whip you good for this!” Tom stormed.

“Don’t Tom, she won’t do it any more, will you Flora?” pleaded Gaston

taking her in his arms and starting to the house with her. When they

reached the house, Tom was still pale and trembling with excitement.

“Lord, there’s so many triflin’ niggers loafin’ round the county now

stealing and doin’ all sorts of devilment, I’m scared to death about

that child. She don’t seem any more afraid of ’em than she is of a

cat.”

“I don’t believe anybody would hurt Flora, Tom,--she’s such a little

angel,” said Gaston kissing the tears from the child’s face.

“She is cute--ain’t she?” said Tom with pride. “I’ve wished many a

time lately I’d gone out West with them Yankee fellers that took such a

likin’ to me in the war. They told me that a poor white man had a chance

out there, and that there wern’t a nigger in twenty miles of their home.

But then I lost my leg, how could I go?”

He sat dreaming with open eyes for a moment and continued, looking

tenderly at Flora, “But, baby, don’t you dare go nigh er nigger, or let

one get nigh you no more’n you would a rattlesnake!”

“I won’t Pappy!” she cried with an incredulous smile at his warning of

danger that made Tom’s heart sick. She was all joy and laughter, full of

health and bubbling life. She believed with a child’s simple faith that

all nature was as innocent as her own heart.

Tom smoothed her curls and kissed her at last, and she slipped her arm

around his neck and squeezed it tight.

“Ain’t she purty and sweet now?” he exclaimed.

“Tom, you ’ll spoil her yet,” warned Gaston as he smiled and took his

leave, throwing a kiss to Flora as he passed through the little yard

gate. Tom had built a fence close around his house when Flora was a baby

to shut her in while he was at work.

Two days later about five o’clock in the afternoon as Gaston sat in his

office writing a letter, to his sweetheart, his face aglow with love and

the certainty that she was his, as he read and re-read her last glowing

words he was startled by the sudden clang of the court house bell.

At first he did not move, only looking up from his paper. Sometimes

mischievous boys rang the bell and ran down the steps before any one

could catch them. But the bell continued its swift stroke seeming

to grow louder and wilder every moment. He saw a man rush across the

square, and then the bell of the Methodist, and then of the Baptist

churches joined their clamour to the alarm.

He snapped the lid of his desk, snatched his hat and ran down the steps.

As he reached the street, he heard the long piercing cry of a woman’s

voice, high, strenuous, quivering!

“A lost child! A lost child!”

What a cry! He was never so thrilled and awed by a human voice. In it

was trembling all the anguish of every mother’s broken heart transmitted

through the centuries!

At the court house door an excited group had gathered. A man was

standing on the steps gesticulating wildly and telling the crowd all he

knew about it. Over the din he caught the name, “Tom Camp’s Flora!”

He breathed hard, bit his lips, and prayed instinctively.

“Lord have mercy on the poor old man! It will kill him!” A great fear

brooded over the hearts of the crowd, and soon the tumult was hushed

into an awed silence.

In Gaston’s heart that fear became a horrible certainty from the first.

Within a half hour a thousand white people were in the crowd. Gaston

stood among them, cool and masterful, organising them in searching

parties, and giving to each group the signals to be used.

In a moment the white race had fused into a homogeneous mass of love,

sympathy, hate, and revenge. The rich and the poor, the learned and the

ignorant, the banker and the blacksmith, the great and the small, they

were all one now. The sorrow of that old one-legged soldier was the

sorrow of all, every heart beat with his, and his life was their life,

and his child their child.

But at the end of an hour there was not a negro among them! By some

subtle instinct they had recognised the secret feelings and fears of the

crowd and had disappeared. Had they been beasts of the field the gulf

between them would not have been deeper.

When Gaston reached Tom’s house the crowd was divided into the groups

agreed upon and a signal gun given to each. If the child was not dead

when found two should be fired--if dead, but one.

He sought Tom to be sure there was no mistake and that the child had not

fallen asleep about the house. He found the old man shut up in his room

kneeling in the middle of the floor praying.

When Gaston laid his hand gently on his shoulder his lips ceased to

move, and he looked at him in a dazed sort of way at first without

speaking.

“Oh!--it’s you, Charlie!” he sighed.

“Yes, Tom, tell me quick. Are you sure she is nowhere in the house?”

“Sure!--Sure?” he cried in a helpless stare. “Yes, yes, I found her

bonnet at the spring. I looked everywhere for an hour before I called

the neighbours!”

“Then I’m off with the searchers. The signal is two guns if they find

her alive. One gun if she is dead. You will understand.”

“Yes, Charlie,” answered the old soldier in a faraway tone of voice,

“and don’t forget to help me pray while you look for her.”

“I’ve tried already, Tom,” he answered as he pressed his hand and left

the house. All night long the search continued, and no signal gun was

heard. Torches and lanterns gleamed from every field and wood, byway and

hedge for miles in every direction.

Through every hour of this awful night Tom Camp was in his room

praying--his face now streaming with tears, now dry and white with the

unspoken terror that could stop the beat of his heart. His white hair

and snow-white beard were dishevelled, as he unconsciously tore them

with his trembling hands. Now he was crying in an agony of intensity,

“As thy servant of old wrestled with the angel of the Lord through the

night, so, oh God, will I lie at Thy feet and wrestle and pray! I will

not let Thee go until Thou bless me! Though I perish, let her live!

I have lost all and praised Thee still. Lord, Thou canst not leave me

desolate!”

From the pain of his wound and the exhaustion of soul and body he

fainted once with his lips still moving in prayer. For more than an hour

he lay as one dead. When he revived, he looked at his clock and it was

but an hour till dawn.

Again he fell on his knees, and again the broken accents of his husky

voice could be heard wrestling with God. Now he would beg and plead

like a child, and then he would rise in the unconscious dignity of an

immortal soul in combat with the powers of the infinite and his language

was in the sublime speech of the old Hebrew seers!

Just before the sun rose the signal gun pealed its message of life, ONE!

TWO! in rapid succession.

Tom sprang to his feet with blazing eyes. _One! Two!_ echoed the guns

from another hill, and fainter grew its repeated call from group to

group of the searchers.

“There! Glory to God!” He screamed at the top of his voice, the last

note of his triumphant shout breaking into sobs. “God be praised! I knew

they would find her--she’s not dead, she’s alive! _alive!_ oh! my soul,

lift up thy head!”

The tramp of swift feet was heard at the door and Gaston told him with

husky stammering voice, “She’s alive Tom, but unconscious. I ’ll have

her brought to the house. She was found just where your spring branch

runs into the Flat Rock, not five hundred yards from here in those

woods. Stay where you are. We will bring her in a minute.”

Gaston bounded back to the scene.

Tom paid no attention to his orders to stay at home, but sprang after

him jumping and falling and scrambling up again as he followed. Before

they knew it he was upon the excited tearful group that stood in a

circle around the child’s body.

Gaston, who was standing on the opposite side from Tom’s approach, saw

him and shouted, “My God, men, stop him! Don’t let him see her yet!” But

Tom was too quick for them. He brushed aside, the boy who caught at him,

as though a feather, crying, “Stand back!”

The circle of men fell away from the body and in a moment Tom stood over

it transfixed with horror.

Flora lay on the ground with her clothes torn to shreds and stained with

blood. Her beautiful yellow curls were matted across her forehead in a

dark red lump beside a wound where her skull had been crushed. The stone

lay at her side, the crimson mark of her life showing on its jagged

edges.

With that stone the brute had tried to strike the death blow. She was

lying on the edge of the hill with her head up the incline. It was too

plain, the terrible crime that had been committed.

The poor father sank beside her body with an inarticulate groan as

though some one had crushed his head with an axe. He seemed dazed for

a moment, and looking around he shouted hoarsely, “The doctor boys! The

doctor quick! For God’s sake, quick! She’s not dead yet--we may save

her--help--help!” he sank again to the ground limp and faint from pain

and was soon insensible.

Gaston gathered the child tenderly in his arms and carried her to the

house. The men hastily made a stretcher and carried Tom behind him.

CHAPTER V--A THOUSAND-LEGGED BEAST

WHILE Gaston and the men were carrying Flora and Tom to the house,

another searching party was formed. There were no women and children

among them, only grim-visaged silent men, and a pair of little mild-eyed

sharp-nosed blood-hounds. All the morning men were coming in from the

country and joining this silent army of searchers.

Doctor Graham came, looked long and gravely at Flora and turned a sad

face toward Tom.

The ole soldier grasped his arm before he spoke. “‘Now, doctor

wait--don’t say a word yet. I don’t want to know the truth, if it’s the

worst. Don’t kill me in a minute. Let me live as long as there’s breath

in her body--after that! well, that’s the end--there’s nothin’ after

that!”

The doctor started to speak.

“Wait,” pleaded Tom, “let me tell you something. I’ve been praying all

night. I’ve seen God face to face. She can’t die. He told me so--”

He paused and his grip on the doctor’s arm relaxed as though he were

about to faint, but he rallied.

The kindly old doctor said gently, “Sit down Tom.”

He tried to lead Tom away from the bed, but he held on like a bull dog.

The child breathed heavily and moaned.

Tom’s face brightened. “She’s comin’ to, doctor,--thank God!”

The doctor paid no more attention to him and went on with his work as

best he could.

Tom laid his tear-stained face close to hers, and murmured soothingly

to her as he used to when she was a wee baby in his arms, “There, there,

honey, it will be all right now! The doctor’s here, and he ’ll do all

he can! And what he can’t do, God will. The doctor ’ll save you. God

will save you! He loves you. He loves me. I prayed all night. He heard

me. I saw the shinin’ glory of His face! He’s only tryin’ His poor old

servant.”

The broken artery was found and tied and the bleeding stopped. When the

wound in her head was dressed the doctor turned to Tom, “That wound is

bad, but not necessarily fatal.”

“Praise God!”

“Keep the house quiet and don’t let her see a strange face when she

regains consciousness,” was his parting injunction.

The next morning her breathing was regular, and pulse stronger, but

feverish; and about seven o’clock she came out of her comatose state and

regained consciousness. She spoke but once, and apparently at the sound

of her own voice immediately went into a convulsion, clinching her

little fists, screaming and calling to her father for help!

When Tom first heard that awful cry and saw her terrified eyes and drawn

face, he tried to cover his own eyes and stop his ears. Then he gathered

the little convulsed body into his arms and crooned into her ears,

“There, Pappy’s baby, don’t cry! Pappy’s got you now. Nothin’ can hurt

you. There, there, nothin’ shall come nigh you!”

He covered her face with tears and kisses while he whispered and soothed

her to sleep. When the noon train came up from Independence, General

Worth arrived. Tom had asked Gaston to telegraph for him in his name.

Tom eagerly grasped his hand. “General I knowed you’d come--you’re a man

to tie to. I never knowed you to fail me in your life. You’re one of the

smartest men in the world too. You never got us boys in a hole so deep

you didn’t pull us out”--

“What can I do for you?” interrupted the General.

“Ah, now’s the worst of all, General. I’m in water too deep for me. My

baby, the last one left on earth, the apple of my eye, all that holds my

old achin’ body to this world--she’s--about--to--die! I can’t let her.

General, you must save her for me. I want more doctors. They say there’s

a great doctor at Independence. I want ’em all. Tell ’em it’s a poor

old one-legged soldier who’s shot all to pieces and lost his wife and

all his children--all but this one baby. And I can’t lose her! They

’ll come if you ask ’em--” His voice broke.

“I ’ll do it, Tom. I ’ll have them here on a special in three hours

or maybe sooner,” returned the General pressing his hand and hurrying to

the telegraph office.

The doctors arrived at three o’clock and held a consultation with Doctor

Graham. They decided that the loss of blood had been so great that the

only chance to save her was in the transfusion of blood.

“I ’ll give her the blood, Tom,” said Gaston quietly removing his coat

and baring his arm.

The old soldier looked up through grateful tears.

“Next to the General, you’re the best friend God ever give me, boy!”

The General turned his face away and looked out of the window. The

doctors immediately performed the operation, transfusing blood from

Gaston into the child.

The results did not seem to promise what they had hoped. Her fever rose

steadily. She became conscious again and immediately went into the most

fearful convulsions, breaking the torn artery a second time.

Just as the sun sank behind the blue mountains peaks in the west, her

heart fluttered and she was dead.

Tom sat by the bed for two hours, looking, looking, looking with wide

staring eyes at her white dead face. There was not the trace of a tear.

His mouth was set in a hard cold way and he never moved or spoke.

The Preacher tried to comfort Tom, who stared at him as though he did

not recognise him at first, and then slowly began, “Go away, Preacher,

I don’t want to see or talk to you now. It’s all a swindle and a lie.

There is no God!”

“Tom, Tom!” groaned the Preacher.

“I tell you I mean it,” he continued. “I don’t want any more of God or

His heaven. I don’t want to see God. For if I should see Him, I’d shake

my fist in His face and ask him where His almighty power was when my

poor little baby was screamin’ for help while that damned black beast

was tearin’ her to pieces! Many and many a time I’ve praised God when I

read the Bible there where it said, not a sparrow falleth to the ground

without His knowledge, and the very hairs of our head are numbered.

Well, where was He when my little bird was flutterin’ her broken

bleedin’ wings in the claws of that stinkin’ baboon,--damn him to

everlastin’ hell!--It’s all a swindle I tell you!”

The Preacher was watching him now with silent pity and tenderness.

“What a lie it all is!” Tom repeated. “Scratch my name off the church

roll. I ain’t got many more days here, but I won’t lie. I’m not a

hypocrite. I’m going to meet God cursin’ Him to His face!”

The Preacher slipped his arm around the old soldier’s neck, and smoothed

the tangled hair back from his forehead as he said brokenly, “Tom, I

love you! My whole soul is melted in sympathy and pity for you!”

The stricken man looked up into the face of his friend, saw his tears

and felt the warmth of his love flood his heart, and at last he burst

into tears.

“Oh! Preacher, Preacher! you’re a good friend I know, but I’m done,

I can’t live any more! Every minute, day and night, I ’ll hear them

awful screams--her a callin’ me for help! I can see her lyin’ out there

in the woods all night alone moanin’ and bleedin’!”

His breast heaved and he paused as if in reverie. And then he sprang up,

his face livid and convulsed with volcanic passions, that half strangled

him while he shrieked, “Oh! if I only had him here before me now, and

God Almighty would give me strength with these hands to tear his breast

open and rip his heart out!--I--could--eat--it--like--a--wolf!”

* * * * *

When they reached the cemetery the next day and the body was about to

be lowered into the grave, Tom suddenly spied old Uncle Reuben Worth

leaning on his spade by the edge of the crowd. Uncle Reuben was the

grave digger of the town and the only negro present.

“Wait!” said Tom raising his hand. “Don’t put her in that grave! A

nigger dug it. I can’t stand it.” He turned to a group of old soldier

comrades standing by and said, “Boys, humour an old broken man once

more. You ’ll dig another grave for me, won’t you? It won’t take long.

The folks can go home that don’t want to stay. I ain’t got no home to go

to now but this graveyard.”

His comrades filled up the grave that Uncle Reuben had dug, and opened

a new one on the other side of the graves where slept his other loved

ones.

Gaston took Tom to his home and stayed with him several hours trying

to help him. He seemed to have settled into a stupor from which nothing

could rouse him. When at length the old man fell asleep, Gaston softly

closed the door and returned to his office with a heavy heart.

As he neared the centre of the town, he heard a murmur like the distant

moaning of the wind in the hush that comes before a storm. It grew

louder and louder and became articulate with occasional words that

seemed far away and unreal. What could it be? He had never heard such

a sound before. Now it became clearer and the murmur was the tread of a

thousand feet and the clatter of horses’ hoofs. Not a cry, or a shout,

or a word. Silence and hurrying feet!

Ah! he knew now. It was the searchers returning, a grim swaying

voiceless mob with one black figure amid them. They were swarming into

the court house square under the big oak where an informal trial was to

be held.

He rushed forward to protest against a lynching. He could just catch a

glimpse of the negro’s head swaying back and forth, protesting innocence

in a singing monotone as though he were already half dead.

He pushed his way roughly through the excited crowd, to the centre where

Hose Norman, the leader, stood with one end of a rope in his hand and

the other around the negro’s neck.

The negro turned his head quickly toward the movement made by the crowd

as Gaston pressed forward.

It was Dick!

Dick recognised him at the same moment, leaped toward him and fell at

his feet crying and pleading as he held his feet and legs.

“Save me, Charlie! I nebber done it! I nebber done it! For God’s sake

help me! Keep ’em off! Dey gwine burn me erlive!”

Gaston turned to the crowd. “Men, there’s not one among you that loved

that old soldier and his girl as I did. But you must not do this crime.

If this negro is guilty, we can prove it in that court house there, and

he will pay the penalty with his life. Give him a fair trial”--

“That’s a lawyer talkin’ now!” said a man in the crowd. “We know that

tune. The lawyers has things their own way in a court house.” A murmur

of assent mingled with oaths ran through the crowd.

“Fair trial!” sneered Hose Norman snatching Dick from the ground by the

rope. “Look at the black devil’s clothes splotched all over with her

blood. We found him under a shelvin’ rock where he’d got by wadin’ up

the branch a quarter of a mile to fool the dogs. We found his track in

the sand some places where he missed the water and tracked him clear

from where we found Flora to the cave he was lying in. Fair trial--hell!

We’re just waitin’ for er can o’ oil. You go back and read your law

books--we ’ll tend ter this devil.”

The messenger came with the oil and the crowd moved forward. Hose

shouted, “Down by Tom Camp’s by his spring, down the spring branch to

the Flat Rock where he killed her!”

On the crowd moved, swaying back and forth with Gaston in their midst by

Dick’s side begging for a fair trial for him. A crowd that hurries and

does not shout is a fearful thing. There is something inhuman in its

uncanny silence.

Gaston’s voice sounded strained and discordant. They paid no more

attention to his protest than to the chirp of a cricket.

They reached the spot where the child’s body had been found. They tied

the screaming, praying negro to a live pine and piled around his body a

great heap of dead wood and saturated it with oil. And then they poured

oil on his clothes.

Gaston looked around him begging first one man then another to help him

fight the crowd and rescue him. Not a hand was lifted, or a voice raised

in protest. There was not a negro among them. Not only was no negro in

that crowd, but there was not a cabin in all that county that would

not have given shelter to the brute, though they knew him guilty of the

crime charged against him. This was the one terrible fact that paralysed

Gaston’s efforts.

Hose Norman stepped forward to apply a match and Gaston grasped his arm.

“For God’s sake, Hose, wait a minute!” he begged. “Don’t disgrace our

town, our county, our state, and our claims to humanity by this insane

brutality. A beast wouldn’t do this. You wouldn’t kill a mad dog or a

rattlesnake in such a way. If you will kill him, shoot him or knock him

in the head with a rock,--don’t burn him alive!”

Hose glared at him and quietly remarked, “Are you done now? If you are,

stand out of the way!”

He struck the match and Dick uttered a scream. As Hose leaned forward

with his match Gaston knocked him down, and a dozen stalwart men were

upon him in a moment.

“Knock the fool in the head!” one shouted.

“Pin his arms behind him!” said another.

Some one quickly pinioned his arms with a cord. He stood in helpless

rage and pity, and as he saw the match applied, bowed his head and burst

into tears.

He looked up at the silent crowd standing there like voiceless ghosts

with renewed wonder.

Under the glare of the light and the tears the crowd seemed to melt into

a great crawling swaying creature, half reptile half beast, half dragon

half man, with a thousand legs, and a thousand eyes, and ten thousand

gleaming teeth, and with no ear to hear and no heart to pity!

All they would grant him was the privilege of gathering Dick’s ashes and

charred bones for burial.

*****

The morning following the lynching, the Preacher hurried to Tom Camp’s

to see how he was bearing the strain.

His door was wide open, the bureau drawers pulled out, ransacked, and

some of their contents were lying on the floor.

“Poor old fellow, I’m afraid he’s gone crazy!” exclaimed the Preacher.

He hurried to the cemetery. There he found Tom at the newly made grave.

He had worked through the night and dug the grave open with his bare

hands and pulled the coffin up out of the ground. He had broken his

finger nails all off trying to open it and his fingers were bleeding. At

last he had given up the effort to open the coffin, sat down beside it,

and was arranging her toys he had made for her beside the box. He had

brought a lot of her clothes, a pair of little shoes and stockings, and

a bonnet, and he had placed these out carefully on top of the lid. He

was talking to her.

The Preacher lifted him gently and led him away, a hopeless madman.

CHAPTER VI--THE BLACK PERIL

THE longer Gaston pondered over the tragic events of that lynching the

more sinister and terrible became its meaning, and the deeper he was

plunged in melancholy.

Beyond all doubt, within his own memory, since the negroes under

Legree’s lead had drawn the colour line in politics, the races had been

drifting steadily apart. The gulf was now impassable.

Such crimes as Dick had committed, and for which he had paid such an

awful penalty, were unknown absolutely under slavery, and were unknown

for two years after the war. Their first appearance was under Legree’s

regime. Now scarcely a day passed in the South without the record of

such an atrocity, swiftly followed by a lynching, and lynching thus had

become a habit for all grave crimes.

Since McLeod’s triumph in the state such crimes had increased with

alarming rapidity. The encroachments of negroes upon public offices had

been slow but resistless. Now there were nine hundred and fifty negro

magistrates in the state elected for no reason except the colour of

their skin. Feeling themselves intrenched behind state and Federal

power, the insolence of a class of young negro men was becoming more and

more intolerable. What would happen to these fools when once they roused

that thousand-legged, thousand-eyed beast with its ten thousand teeth

and nails! He had looked into its face, and he shuddered to recall the

hour.

He knew that this power of racial fury of the Anglo-Saxon when aroused

was resistless, and that it would sweep its victims before its wrath

like chaff before a whirlwind.

And then he thought of the day fast coming when culture and wealth would

give the African the courage of conscious strength and he would answer

that soul piercing shriek of his kindred for help, and that other

thousand-legged beast, now crouching in the shadows, would meet

thousand-legged beast around that beacon fire of a Godless revenge!

More and more the impossible position of the Negro in America came home

to his mind. He was fast being overwhelmed with the conviction that

sooner or later we must squarely face the fact that two such races,

counting millions in numbers, can not live together under a Democracy.

He recalled the fact that there were more negroes in the United States

than inhabitants in Mexico, the third republic of the world.

Amalgamation simply meant Africanisation. The big nostrils, fiat nose,

massive jaw, protruding lip and kinky hair will register their animal

marks over the proudest intellect and the rarest beauty of any other

race. The rule that had no exception was that one drop of Negro blood

makes a negro.

What could be the outcome of it? What was his duty as a citizen and

a member of civilised society? Since the scenes through which he

had passed with Tom Camp and that mob the question was insistent and

personal. It clouded his soul and weighed on him like the horrors of a

nightmare.

Again and again the fateful words the Preacher had dinned into his ears

since childhood pressed upon him, “_You can not build in a Democracy a

nation inside a nation of two antagonistic races. The future American

must be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto_.”

His depression and brooding over the fearful events in which he had so

recently taken part had tinged his life and all its hopes with sadness.

He had reflected this in his letters to Sallie Worth without even

mentioning the events. His heart was full of sickening foreboding. How

could one love and be happy in a world haunted by such horrors! He had

begged her to hasten her hour of final decision. He told her of his

sense of loneliness and isolation, and of his inexpressible need of her

love and presence in his daily life.

Her answer had only intensified his moody feelings. She had written

that her love grew stronger every day and his love more and more became

necessary to her life, and yet she could not cloud its future with the

anger of her father and the broken heart of her mother by an elopement.

She feared such a shock would be fatal and all her life would be

embittered by it. They must wait. She was using all her skill to win her

father, but as yet without success. But she determined to win him, and

it would be so.

All this seemed so far away and shadowy to Gaston’s eager restless soul.

The letter had closed by saying she was preparing for another trip to

Boston to visit Helen Lowell and that she should be absent at least a

month. She asked that his next letter be addressed to Boston.

Somehow Boston seemed just then out of the world on another planet,

it was so far away and its people and their life so unreal to his

imagination.

But he sighed and turned resolutely to his work of preparation for an

event in his life which he, meant to make great in the history of the

state. It was the meeting of the Democratic convention, as yet nearly

two years in the future. He held a subordinate position in his party’s

councils, but defeat and ruin had taken the conceit out of the old line

leaders and he knew that his day was drawing near.

“I ’ll take my place among the leaders and masters of men,” he told

himself with quiet determination, “I will compel the General’s respect;

and if I can not win his consent, I will take her without it.”

CHAPTER VII--EQUALITY WITH A RESERVATION

THE lynching at Hambright had stirred the whole nation into unusual

indignant interest. It happened to be the climax of a series of such

crimes committed in the South in rapid succession, and the death of this

negro was reported with more than usual vividness by a young newspaper

man of genius.

A grand mass meeting was called in Cooper Union, New York, at which were

gathered delegates from different cities and states to give emphasis and

unity to the movement and issue an appeal to the national government.

When Sallie Worth reached Boston, she found Helen Lowell at home alone.

The Hon. Everett Lowell had made one of the speeches of his career at

the mass meeting held in Faneuil Hall, and he was in New York where he

had gone to make the principal address in the Cooper Union Convention of

Negro sympathisers.

George Harris had accompanied him, supremely fascinated by the eloquent

and masterful appeal for human brotherhood he had heard him make in

Boston. There was something pathetic in the dog-like worship this young

negro gave to his brilliant patron. In his life in New England he had

been shocked more than once by the brutal prejudices of the people

against his race. His soul had been tried to the last of its powers

of endurance at times. He found to his amazement that, when put to the

test, the masses of the North had even deeper repugnance to the person

of a Negro than the Southerners who grew up with him from the cradle.

He had found himself cut off from every honourable way of earning his

bread, gentleman and scholar though he was, and had looked into the

river as he walked over the bridge to Cambridge one night with a

well-nigh resistless impulse to end it all.

But Lowell had cheered him, laughed his gloomy ideas to scorn, and more

practical still, he had secured him a clerkship in the Custom House

which settled the problem of bread. Others had failed him, but this man

of trained powers had never failed him. He had taught him to lift up his

head and look the world squarely in the face. Lowell was, to his vivid

African imagination, the ideal man made in the image of God, calm in

judgment, free from all superstitions and prejudices, a citizen of the

world of human thought, a prince of that vast ethical aristocracy of the

free thinkers of all ages who knew no racial or conventional barriers

between man and man.

Harris had published a volume of poems which he had dedicated to Lowell,

and his most inspiring verse was simply the outpouring of his soul in

worship of this ideal man.

He was his devoted worshipper for another and more powerful reason. In

his daily intercourse with him in his library during his campaigns he

had frequently met his beautiful daughter, and had fallen deeply and

madly in love with her. This secret passion he had kept hidden in his

sensitive soul. He had worshipped her from afar as though she had been a

white-robed angel. To see her and be in the same house with her was

all he asked. Now and then he had stood beside the piano and turned the

music while she played and sang one of his new pieces, and he would live

on that scene for months, eating his heart out with voiceless yearnings

he dared not express.

In his music he made his greatest success. There was a fiery sweep to

his passion, and a deep oriental rhythm in his cadence that held the

imagination of his hearers in a spell. It is needless to say it was in

this music he breathed his secret love.

At first he had not dared to hope for the day when he could declare this

secret or take his place in the list of her admirers and fight for his

chance. But of late, a great hope had filled his soul and illumined

the world. As he had listened to Lowell’s impassioned appeals for human

brotherhood, his scathing ridicule of pride and prejudice, and

the poetic beauty of the language in which he proclaimed his own

emancipation from all the laws of caste, the fiery eloquence with which

he trampled upon all the barriers man had erected against his fellow

man, his soul was thrilled into ecstasy with the conviction that this

scholar and scientific thinker, at least, was a free man. He was sure

that he had risen above the limitations of provincialisms, racial or

national prejudices.

He had begun to dream of the day he would ask this Godlike man for the

privilege of addressing his daughter.

The great meeting at Cooper Union had brought this dream to a sudden

resolution. Lowell had outdone himself that night. With merciless

invective he had denounced the inhuman barbarism of the South in these

lynchings. The sea of eager faces had answered his appeals as water the

breath of a storm. He felt its mighty reflex influence sweep back on

his soul and lift him to greater heights. He demanded equality of man on

every inch of this earth’s soil.

“I demand this perfect equality,” he cried, “absolutely without

reservation or subterfuge, both in form and essential reality. It is the

life-blood of Democracy. It is the reason of our existence. Without this

we are a living lie, a stench in the nostrils of God and humanity!”

A cheer from a thousand negro throats rent the air as he thus closed.

The crowd surged over the platform and for ten minutes it was impossible

to restore order or continue the programme. Young Harris pressed his

patron’s hand and kissed it while tears of pride and gratitude rained

down his face.

This speech made a national sensation. It was printed in full in all the

partisan papers where it was hoped capital might be made of it for the

next political campaign, and the National Campaign Committee of which

he was a member ordered a million copies of it printed for distribution

among the negroes.

When Lowell and Harris reached Boston, as they parted at the depot

Harris said, “Will you be at home to-morrow, Mr. Lowell?”

“Yes, why?”

“I would like a talk with you in the morning on a matter of grave

importance. May I call at nine o’clock?”

“Certainly. Come right into the library. You ’ll find me there,

George.”

That night as Lowell walked through his brilliantly lighted home, he

felt a sense of glowing pride and strength. With his hands behind him he

paced back and forth in his great library and out through the spacious

hall with firm tread and flushed face. He felt he could look these great

ancestors in the face to-night as they gazed down on him from their

heavy gold frames. They had called him to high ambitions and a strenuous

life when his indolence had pleaded for ease and the dilettante-ism of

a fruitless dreaming. His father had cultivated his artistic tastes,

dreamed and done nothing. But these grim-visaged, eagle-eyed ancestors

had called him to a life of realities, and he had heard their voices.

Yes, to-night his name was on a million lips. The door of the United

States Senate was opening at his touch and mightier possibilities loomed

in the future.

He felt a sense of gratitude for the heritage of that stately old home

and its inspiring memories. Its roots struck down into the soil of a

thousand years, and spread beneath the ocean to that greater old world

life. He felt his heart beat with pride that he was adding new honours

to that family history, and adding to the soul-treasures his daughter’s

children would inherit.

Seated in the library next morning Harris was nervous and embarrassed.

He made two or three attempts to begin the subject but turned aside with

some unimportant remark.

“Well, George, what is the problem that makes you so grave this

morning?” asked Lowell with kindly patronage.

Harris felt that his hour had come, and he must face it. He leaned

forward in his chair and looked steadily down at the rug, while he

clasped both his hands firmly across his lap and spoke with great

rapidity.

“Mr. Lowell, I wish to say to you that you have taught me the greatest

faith of life, faith in my fellow man without which there can be no

faith in God. What I have suffered as a man as I have come in contact

with the brutality with which my race is almost universally treated, God

only can ever know.

“The culture I have received has simply multiplied a thousandfold my

capacity to suffer. But for the inspiration of your manhood I would have

ended my life in the river. In you, I saw a great light. I saw a man

really made in the image of God with mind and soul trained, with head

erect, seeing the weak prejudices of caste, which dare to call the

image of God clean or unclean in passion or pride.

“I lifted up my head and said, one such man redeems a world from infamy.

It’s worth while to live in a world honoured by one such man, for he is

the prophecy of more to come.”

He paused a moment, fidgeted with a piece of paper he had picked up from

the table and seemed at a loss for a word.

It never dawned on Lowell what he was driving at. He supposed, as a

matter of course, he was referring to his great speeches and was going

to ask for some promotion in a governmental department at Washington.

“I’m proud to have been such an inspiration to you, George. You know how

much I think of you. What is on your mind?” he asked at length.