THE GOING OUT OF EVE When the next day was breaking, Durgan wakened to the sound of footsteps and loud lamenting. Adam, weeping like a heart-broken schoolboy, in terrified haste stumbled into the door of the hut. "Marse Neil, suh, I've been huntin' her the whole night long, an' I've found her done dead. Marsa, come, for de good Lord's sake! She's lyin' all by herself on de ground. Oh, oh, my pore gal; my pore honey!" He was now running away again, and Durgan was following. In the thick of the forest, in a hollow of coarse fern, lay the pretty Eve--a bronze figure of exquisite workmanship. One small dark wound was seen above her heart, where the torn muslin of her bodice revealed the beautiful rounding of neck and breast. She lay with her face upturned, and death's seal of peace upon her lips. Big Adam knelt sobbing by her side, trying to close the fringed eyelids, which allowed one crescent line of the velvet eye to be seen. "Adam, tell me what you know." Durgan's imperious tone was a needed tonic. The big negro drew himself up and controlled his sobs. With a gesture toward the dead of great simplicity, he said, "I know nuthin', marsa--nuthin' but this! Miss Smith, she sen' me last night with a lettah for the Gen'ral. The hoss los' a shoe, so I leave him an' walk. I come home very late, near middle of night, an' I meet that yaller boy, all up an' dressed, in the Cove. So I run home, an' my poor gal was gone from the cabin. I'se been lookin' for her the whole night through till I foun' her. Oh, oh! Marse Neil! my pore, pore gal!" He broke down again in tears, casting himself beside the corpse on the ground. Durgan looked at the two with indescribable sorrow. How he had desired to have this woman out of the way--Adam free from his thraldom, the sisters from their mischief-making! Now! There is naught on earth can grieve the heart of the living like the face of the dead. The dawn brightened; the birds sang peans of joy; the gay wind danced; and over the woman who had been so light and winsome a part of yesterday's life a rigid chill had crept, which made her to-day a part only of the dark cold earth. Durgan stood with head bowed. He remembered the day his father had bought her, a babe with her mother, to save them from a darker fate. In this dead body was the blood of fathers who, calling themselves American gentlemen, had, one generation after another, sold their own children as slaves. What chance had she to have in her nerve or fibre that could vibrate to any sense of good? If her spirit had now passed to plead at the bar of some great judgment-hall, on whose head must the doom of her transgressions fall? At length he knelt on one knee and laid his hand on Adam's head. "Don't cry so! Oh, Adam; you've got your old master's son to love, you big nigger. I couldn't do without you. You'll kill yourself crying for the poor girl like that."