"That's right, lady. Don't go with him. Go with any of the rest of these men in preference to him," said a genial faced young man, slightly below medium height, rather corpulent and very dark. The young woman looked in his direction and was favorably impressed with his open, frank expression. "I'll trust myself to your care," said she, pulling away from the well dressed young man. Leroy Crutcher, for such was his name, cast a look of malignant hatred at Bud Harper, the successful hackman and muttered something under his breath. He also scowled at the young woman whose utter disdain of him had cut him to the quick. "I will get even with the pair of them, if it takes me the balance of my life," said Leroy Crutcher to the group of hackmen, after Bud Harper and the young woman had driven away. The men looked at him in sullen, contemptuous silence, loathing and yet dreading him more than they did a serpent, for he conducted a house of ill-repute for the exclusive use of white men and Negro girls, and, being diligent in endeavoring to bring to his home any and all Negro girls to whom his white patrons might take a fancy, had great influence with this element of whites. Noting the indisposition of the men to talk to him, and rightly interpreting their contemptuous silence, Crutcher drew from his pocket a wallet full of greenbacks. Taking out as many one dollar bills as there were hackmen, he threw them on the platform and said, "I am a gentleman, myself. Money talks these days. Help yourselves, gentlemen." The men did not look at the money. Each one returned to his vehicle and journeyed to his humble home, leaving Crutcher alone upon the platform. If the hackmen had taken his money it would have served as proof to him that they were no better than he, that they were not in a business like his simply because they lacked his skill and finesse. The action of the hackmen intensified his resentment at the treatment accorded him by Bud Harper and the young woman, and, meditating vengeance, he now walked toward his den of infamy where his mother had reigned in her day and where he was born of a white father. The human race has not thus far even approached the point of constructing such habitations as would render mankind indifferent to rumblings underground, nor has society such secure foundation that it can think lightly of its lower elements. In the long run the LeRoy Crutchers will be heard from. It is inevitable. CHAPTER III. _Wherein Foresta First Appears._ When the young woman who had committed herself to Bud Harper's care awoke the next morning she saw standing near her a tall, slender, Negro girl, of a dark brown complexion.