In a twinkling she was at the foot of the steps and at my rein—a girl, young, slender, dark and fiercely excited. “If you are a man,” she cried, seizing my arm, “if you are a gentleman, you’ll not come here! Do you hear, sir! There are reasons, a thousand reasons why we cannot take you in. And more—” On that word she stopped. A change came over her face as she looked into mine. The only answer I could give her—she had gripped my wounded arm and I could bear no more—was to faint away. As the man had said, I was in sore need of a sup of Kentucky whisky. CHAPTER III MADAM CONSTANTIA _I see how she doth wry, When I begin to moan; I see when I come nigh, How fain she would be gone._ _I see—what will ye more? She will me gladly kill: And you shall see therefore That she shall have her will._ ANON. When I came to myself I was, by comparison, in a haven of comfort. I was in a clean bed, in a clean room, I was wearing a shirt that was also clean and was certainly not my own. A negro woman with a yellow kerchief bound about her head was holding a lamp, while a colored man who was bending over me, contrived a cage to lift the coverlet clear of my shoulder and arm. The room was small, with boarded walls, and the furniture was of plain wood and roughly made, of the kind that is found in the smaller plantations of this upper country. But my eye alighted on a framed sampler hung between two prints above the bedhead; and this and one or two handsome mahogany pieces told a story of changes and journeys, which these, the cherished relics of an older house, perhaps in the Tidewater, had survived. I noted these things dreamily, blissfully, resting in a haven of ease. Presently the man stood back to admire his work, and the woman, turning to glance at my face, saw that my eyes were open. She set down the lamp and fetching a cup held it to my lips. I have reason to believe that it held milk-punch; but for me it held nectar, and I drank greedily and as long as she would let me. Whatever it was, the draught cleared my mind; and when the man turned to the table and began to occupy himself with rolling up a monstrous length of bandage, I saw the woman sign to him. They looked towards the door, and I became aware of the voices of two people who were talking in an outer room. The speakers were the two who had debated my fate before, while I hung, worn out, over my horse’s neck; and the question between them was apparently the same. “But I can’t see it, father!” the girl was saying, repeating it as if she had said it half a dozen times before. “I can’t see it. What is he to us? Why should we do it? Think of my mother! Think of Dick! Haven’t I heard you say a hundred times—”