With a misleading smile of denial on her face Helen turned homeward. He loved her--Carson Dwight--_that man_ of all men--still loved her. Her body felt imponderable as she strode blithely on her way. In her hands she carried a human life--the life of the poor boy Carson had so wonderfully struggled for and intrusted to her keeping. To his mother and father Pete was dead, but to her and Carson, her first sweetheart, he still lived. The secret was theirs to hold between their throbbing hearts. Old Linda's grief was but a dream. Helen and Carson could draw aside the black curtain and tell her to look and see the truth. Standing with bowed head at the front gate when she arrived home, she saw old Uncle Lewis, his bald pate bared to the sunshine. “Mam' Lindy axin' 'bout you, missy,” he said, pitifully. “She say you went down-town ter see Marse Carson, en she seem mighty nigh crazy ter know ef you found whar de--de body er de po' boy is at. Dat all she's beggin' en pleadin' fer now, missy, en ef dem white mens refuse it, de Lawd only know what she gwine ter do.” Helen gazed at him helplessly. Her whole young being was wrung with the desire to let him know the truth, and yet how could she tell him what had been revealed to her in such strict confidence? “I'll go see mammy now,” she said. “I've no news yet, Uncle Lewis--no news that I can give you. I'm looking for Carson to come up soon.” As she neared the cottage the motley group of negroes, serious-faced men and women, bland-eyed persons in their teens, and half-clad children, around the door intuitively and respectfully drew aside and she entered the cottage unaccompanied and unannounced. Linda was not in the sitting-room, where she expected to find her, and so, wonderingly, Helen turned into the kitchen adjoining. Here the general aspect of things added to her growing surprise, for the old woman had drawn close the curtains of the little, small-paned windows, and before a small fire in the chimney she sat prone on the ash-covered hearth. That alone might not have been so surprising, but Linda had covered her body with several old tow sacks upon which she had plentifully sprinkled ashes. The grayish powder was in her short hair, on her face and bare arms, and filled her lap. There was one thing in the world that the old woman prized above all else--a big, leather-bound family Bible which she had owned since she first learned to read under the instruction of Helen's mother, and this, also ash-covered, lay open by her side. “Is I gwine ter bury my chile?” she demanded, as she glared up at her mistress. “What young marster say? Is I, or is I never ter lay eyes on 'im ergin? Is I de only nigger mother dat ever lived on dis yeth, bound er free, dat cayn't have dat much? Tell me. Ef dey gwine ter le' me see 'im Marse Carson ud know it. What he say?”