history which white neglect and criminality had spread, as naturally as the poisoned sting flutters from the swamps of summer. And he filled the night of vengeance, which was accorded to him by laws that cannot be repealed without making the whole life of the planet one sustained expression of the wrath of God. A furious storm raged during the night of August 22: the blackness was rent by the lightning that is known only to the hurricane-regions of the earth. The negroes gathered upon the Morne Rouge, sacrificed a black heifer with frantic dances which the elements seemed to electrify, thunder emphasized the declaration of the priestess that the entrails were satisfactory, and the quarters were thrown into a huge brazier to be burned. At that moment a bird fell from the overhanging branch of a tree directly into the cooking spell, and terrible shouts of encouragement hailed the omen. Is it an old Pelasgic or a Thracian forest grown mænadic over some forgotten vengeance of the early days? It is the unalterable human nature, masked in the deeper colors of more fervid skies, gathering a mighty breath into its lacerated bosom for a rending of outrage and a lion's leap in the dark against its foe. "Listen!" cried Buckman. "The good God conceals himself in a cloud, He mutters in the tempest. By the whites He commands crime, by us He commands benefits. But God, who is good, ordains for us vengeance. Tear down the figure of the white man's God which brings the tears to your eyes. Hear! It is Liberty! It speaks to the hearts of us all." The morning broke clear, but the tempest had dropped from the skies to earth. The costly habitations, whose cornerstones were dungeons, in whose courts the gay guests of the planter used to season their dessert with the punishments he had saved up for them, were carried off by exulting flames. The great fields of cane, which pumped the earth's sap and the negro's blood up for the slaveholder's caldron, went crackling away with the houses which they furnished. Rich garments, dainty upholstery, and the last fashions of Paris went parading on the negroes' backs, and hid the marks of the floggings which earned them. The dead women and children lay in the thickets where they had vainly implored mercy. There are long careers of guiltiness whose devilish nature becomes apparent only when innocence suffers with it. Then the cry of a babe upon a negro's pike is the voice of God's judgment against a century.