The first glance in the cabin was enough. Its two beds, its rickety chairs and uncovered table, were the whole of the tale so far as furniture went, and a pathetic tale it was. But the tragedy began with the man who lay in one of the beds. His wandering, wild glance fell upon the visitors with something like terror. His yellow skin clung to his bones, and only one side of his body was alive. The other was immovable in the curious half-death of paralysis. It was Keefe who first went to him, for Mr. Thompson had paused a moment, aghast at the sight. “You must pardon us for coming to your home, sir,” he said in such a gentle and winning way that no one could have resisted his plea. “It is taking a liberty, we know, but we heard how ill you were and how no doctor could get to you. We are not doctors, but we mean to get you to one if it will do any good.” Panther, it appeared, could talk but little. He shook his head despairingly at Keefe’s speech, and made a strange, inarticulate sound in his throat. “Nothing won’t help him,” said his wife. “A tree fell on him and he’s got the paraletics. He ain’t going to git well.” She made the statement calmly. She was used to the idea; it was her house-companion and always with her. “Where’s Pete?” asked Paralee. “Ain’t he ’round?” “He’s done lit out,” said Mrs. Panther, still in that dead voice. “Lit out?” cried Paralee. “You don’t mean he’s gone and run away?” Mrs. Panther nodded again; and again the eyes of her husband rolled wildly. “Did he leave you all alone, ma?” persisted Paralee. “’Th’out anybody to do for you?” “My childer has all done that,” said the woman. “Thar ain’t nary one left.” “Oh, but Paralee didn’t mean to desert you, ma’am,” cried Azalea, unable to endure the spiritual bleakness of that home another minute. “It was only that she might find some way to help you that she left. She’s going to be a teacher; she—” Mrs. Panther lifted her sun-faded eyes and looked at Azalea with unspeakable scorn. “Her! A teacher!” she said. Azalea saw Paralee cower at this speech, and she knew then why the girl was so sullen, so heavily sad. She had been “put down” all her life, and she had grown to be like a hateful, chained beast under it. Then Miss Zillah spoke. She was occupying one of the three chairs in the room, and in that bare and bitter place, she looked—with her kind face and seemly garments—like a being from another world than that in which poor Mrs. Panther lived and had her aimless being. “She has the wish to be a teacher, Mrs. Panther,” she said in her soft tones, “and she has the brains for it as well, so these young ladies tell me. In fact, I hear that she understands book-studying better than most. We all hope to help her, ma’am, and to see you and your husband in a different home from this. Wouldn’t you like to have neighbors and to be where a doctor could visit your husband?”