“It gwine ter _kill_ 'er, Mary Lou; she won't live dis week out. I know 'er. She had ernough dis life wid all she been thoo fur 'erself en her white folks, in bondage en out, en' dis gwine ter settle 'er. I don't blame 'er. I'm done thoo myse'f. Ef de Lawd had spar' my child, I wouldn't er ax mo', but, Mary Lou, I hope I ain't gwine ter stay long. I'll hear dat po' boy beggin' fer mercy every minute while I live, en what I want mo' of it fur? Shucks! no, I'm raidy--en, 'fo' God, I wish dey had er tuck us all three at once. Dat ud 'a' been some comfort, but fer Pete ter be by hisse'f beggin' um ter spar' 'im--all by hisse'f, en me 'n his mammy--” The old man's head went down and his body shook with sobs. The woman looked at him a moment, and then, wiping her eyes on her apron, she went on her way. A few minutes later, just as the red sun was rising in a clear sky and turning the night's moisture into dazzling gems on the grass and leaves of trees and shrubbery, like the beneficent smile of God upon a pleasing world, Helen descended the stairs. She had the sweet, pale face of a suffering nun as she paused, looked down on the old servant, and caught his piteous and yet grateful, upturned glance. “I'm going to her now, Uncle Lewis,” she said. “I want to be the first to tell her.” “Yes, you mus' be de one,” Lewis sighed, as he rose stiffly; “you de onliest one.” He shambled along in her wake, his old hat, out of respect for her presence, grasped in his tense hand. As they drew near the little sagging gate at the cottage there was a sound of moving feet within, and Linda stood in the doorway shading her eyes from the rays of the sun with her fat hand. To the end of her life Helen had the memory of the old woman's face stamped on her brain. It was a yellow mask, which might have belonged to a dead as well as a living creature, behind which the lights of hope and shadows of despair were vying with each other for supremacy. In no thing pertaining to the situation did the pathos so piteously lie as in the fact that Linda was deliberately playing a part--fiercely acting a rôle that would fit itself to that for which the agony of her soul was pleading. She was trying to smile away the shadows her inward fears, her racial intuition were casting on her face. “Mighty early fer you ter come, honey,” she said; “but I reckon you is worried 'bout yo' ol' mammy.” “Yes, it's early for me to be up,” Helen said, avoiding the wavering glance that seemed in reality to be avoiding the revelation of hers. “But I saw Uncle Lewis and thought I'd come back with him.”