"Not even my ole mammy. She voodooed me. She said I brought her bad luck, an’ everybody tuk up de bad word agin me--" "Well?" "Even when I was a child, dey laid ever’thin’ awn to me." "I know." "Well, you say ’’Polyte, I trus’ you. You tek care ob me.’" "Yes, that is what I say." "Well, Miss Calline, _you gwine be teken cah ob_!" "I am sure of it. Good-bye, ’Polyte." As she rode away, Carolina’s shoulders drooped until she seemed fairly to shrink in her saddle. "If he had touched me--oh, my God!--if he had touched me, I would have killed myself!" She bowed her face in her hands, and the bitter tears streamed through her fingers. She strove to think--to quiet herself--no one must know. Suddenly she heard the hoof-beats of a horse behind her. She dashed away her tears and straightened herself in her saddle. If any white man suspected the cause of her agitation, a human life--the life of some black man--would pay the forfeit. ’Polyte’s life was in her keeping. She began to think of him as her property,--a human soul given into her power until it could be saved through her ministrations. God help him to have got away! God protect him! Black or white, he was God’s child! The tear-stained face of a white woman,--a woman riding alone? Scintilla had never felt a spur before in her life. Carolina knew it by her snort of fright and surprise. But she needed her best speed to draw away from the avenging white man on her track. In her stall that night, Scintilla knew that there was a sharp-toothed animal which had bitten her twice in one short ride. She had tried to run away from it, but it was fastened to a woman’s heel. CHAPTER XX. MOULTRIE It was the last of March. Spring, which comes so early in the South, was already in the fulfilment of her promise, and no lovelier spot could be found than that portion of South Carolina which contains the estates of Guildford, Sunnymede, and Whitehall.