“Well, I don't either,” said Keith. “I went to the bank and tried to add up some figures for the old man, but my thinker wouldn't work. It's out of whack. That blasted nigger Pete is the prime cause of my being upset. I came by Major Warren's this morning. Sister feels awfully sorry for Mam' Linda, and asked me to take her a jar of jelly. You know old colored people love little attentions like that from white people, when they are sick or in trouble. Well”--Keith held up his hands, the palms outward--“I don't want any more in mine. I've been to death-bed scenes, funerals, wrecks on railroads, and all sorts of horrors, but that was simply too much. It simply beggars description--to see that old woman bowed there in her door like a dumb brute with its tongue tied to a stake. It made me ashamed of myself, though, for not at least trying to do something. I glory in you, old man. You failed, but you _tried_. By-the-way, that's the only comfort Mam' Linda has had--the only thing. Helen was there, the dear girl--and to think her visit home has to be like this!--she was there trying to soothe the old woman, but nothing that was said could produce anything but that awful groaning of hers till Lewis said something about your going over there yesterday, and that stirred her up. She rose in her chair and walked to the gate and folded her big arms across her breast. “'I thank God young marster felt fer me dat way,' she said. 'He's de best young man on de face o' de earth. I'll go down ter my grave blessing 'im fer dis. He's got er _soul_ in 'im. He knows how old Mammy Lindy feels en he was tryin' ter help her, God bless 'im! He couldn't do nothin', but he tried--he tried, dough everybody was holdin' 'im back en sayin' it would spile his 'lection. Well, if it _do_ harm 'im, it will show dat Gawd done turn ergin white en black bofe.' I came away,” Keith finished, after a pause, in which Carson said nothing. “I couldn't stand it. Helen was crying like a child, her face wet with tears, and she wasn't trying to hide it. I was looking for some one to come every minute with the final news, and I didn't want to face that. Good God, old man, what are we coming to? Historians, Northern ones, seem to think the days of slavery were benighted, but God knows such things as this never happened then. Now, did it?” “No; it's terrible,” Carson agreed, and he stepped to a window and looked out over the roofs of the near-by stores to the wagon-yard beyond.