“He did worse!” cried Harrington, with stern energy: “he enslaved a hundred of your people! He heaped on them every wrong and outrage worse than death. They were in his power, and he never spared them. Now the power is yours. How will you use it? As basely as he did? Will you degrade yourself by following his example? Will you lower yourself to the level of a brute that has not manhood enough for mercy?” The negro stood touched, but irresolute. Harrington saw that the crisis had come, and that a feather either way would turn the scale. A desperate inspiration came to him, and with a bound he tore open the door of the inner room, and dragged Lafitte front to front with the negro. “Look at him!” he cried. “Helpless, miserable, merciless wretch, I cast him on your mercy! Show him what it is to be a man. Teach him the lesson that he never learned—how the brave can spare; and let him crawl home with the shame upon him that he owes his life to the compassion of the people he would destroy!” The words swept from Harrington’s lips like a storm. An awful moment of silence succeeded, disturbed only by the roaring clamor of voices that surged around the dwelling. In that moment, the slaveholder, believing that his hour had come, stood crouching and ahunch, stupefied with terror, his hands clasped, his dead eyes staring on the visage of the negro, his hair bedrenched and limp around his livid, sweat-bedabbled face, his dark moustache hanging dank above his fallen jaw, his breath coming and going in short, thick gasps, and his whole frame shaken like an aspen. Muriel, calm, but still and pallid as a statue, stood gazing on him with a white sparkle in her ashen eyes. The negro, dilated to his full height, like a man in the presence of a wild beast, glared upon him for an instant with a look of frightful ferocity, and then his expression changing to contemptuous pity, he burst into a short, scornful guffaw. “You damned soul-driving tyrant,” he bellowed at him, “I could split your heart with this knife if you wasn’t too mis’ably mean for me to look at.” And with this address, and another short, scornful guffaw, he turned away, snorting with contempt, and sheathed his bowie-knife under his waistcoat. Muriel started from her stillness, and with something of her usual frank and cordial air, advanced and held out her hand to him. The negro, suddenly disturbed, as though just conscious of her presence, took the offered hand, half ashamedly, and bowed low.