The great flames were leaping upward toward the sky. The marble Artemis would lift her snowy white arms to hide her face from the sight. The little wet violets at her feet would droop in prayer. The olive tree by the window, the little orange grove of which Mrs. Corbin was so proud, the well appointed premises filled with slaves and buildings, all of these were gone forever. And the black faces of slaves were peering in terror from the darkness. Camellia-on-the-Ashley had perished as the horse of the Indian is slain when his master dies. Then to the right and west there was another glow, but that he knew well. It was the bridge of the Charleston and Savannah Railway over the Ashley. And lo, in the very harbor itself a bright light began to glow! The gunboats were burning! Then he turned, sick at heart, and walked back through the deserted city, back to the office; this sad-hearted man whose dearest friend had perished in the blowing up of the _Housatonic_. “Ah, McArthur, I loved you,” the old man said, as the tears sprang to his eyes. Then, ringing weirdly through the streets, he heard a cry: “We slew them, we conquered them! Brave men! Five hundred thousand men died in five minutes. Hurrah!” The voice was familiar and the man who spoke was coming toward him, his long hair streaming in the wind. He came nearer. “Ah! friend, have you heard the news? They have killed every man in the South. We showed them how to cut off their necks, a million at a time. Then said I, ‘Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black!’” It was Sam Tillett, who had borne the flag when General Anderson surrendered Sumter. “Poor fellow,” said the colonel sadly, passing him by. “A raving lunatic.” And in the darkness the man ran on, shouting: “Victory! Victory! We have slain! We have slain! Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black—black—black!” “And yet,” the colonel added, “it is as he says.” Then the editor went back to the office and sat long and lonely in the darkness. Automatically, he took a sheet of writing paper and wrote the heading for to-morrow’s editorial: A MAN’S PART. And all night long he sat and thought, only somehow the charge at Churubusco would come back, and the violets of Sudbury, and a face that he had long ago told himself that he must never think of again, but which had a way of coming in moments like this, like the scent of roses from some far-off garden of joy. Once he was on the point of laying down the pen and giving all up forever, but when he saw the headlines of his editorial he began again to ponder. The face came back, the face he loved, and smiled at him from behind the Stars and Bars. And somehow he could not think of her, or her home, but his heart went back to the old days and the Union he loved. After all, was it not one land, one race, one history, one hope? So his eyes brightened and he wrote a line beneath the caption: