ck cloud shut out the moonlight. Above the pleading of the
sheriffs tones he heard the distant baying of the hound.

He tried to speak again. "We'll be damned, but we'll get the nigger!"
called some one beside him. The words struck him like a blow. He saw
red, and the sudden rage upheld him. He knew that he was to fight--a
blind fight for he cared not what. The old savage instinct blazed within
him--the instinct to do battle to death--to throttle with, his single
hand the odds that opposed. With a grip of iron he braced himself
against the doorway, covering the entrance.

"I'll be damned if you do!" he thundered.

A quick shot rang out sharply. The flash blinded him, and the smoke hung
in his face. Then the moon shone and he heard a cry--the cry of a
well-known voice.

"By God, it's Nick Burr!" it said. He took a step forward.

"Boys, I am Nick Burr," he cried, and he went down in the arms of the
mob.

They raised him up, and he stood erect between the leaders. There was
blood on his lips, but a man tore off a mask and wiped it away. "By God,
it's Nick Burr!" he exclaimed as he did so.

Nicholas recognised his voice and smiled. His face was gray, but his
eyes were shining, and as he steadied himself with all his strength, he
said with a laugh. "There's no harm done, man." But when they laid him
down a moment later he was dead.

He lay in the narrow path between the doorstep and the gate where roses
bloomed. Some one had started for the nearest house, but the crowd stood
motionless about him. "By God, it's Nick Burr!" repeated the man who had
held him.

The sheriff knelt on the ground and raised him in his arms. As he folded
his coat about him he looked up and spoke.

"And he died for a damned brute," was what he said.

VI

It was the afternoon of election day, and Eugenia sat in her
drawing-room with Sally Bassett.

Outside there was the sound of tramping feet, for the people were giving
him burial. They had been passing so for half an hour and they still
went on, on, on--he was going to his grave in state.

"There are the drums," said Sally, turning her ear. "All Virginia has
come to town, I believe. The whole city is in mourning, and by and by
they will put up his statue in the Capitol Square--but if he had lived,
would he have had the senatorship?"

"Ah, who knows?" said Eugenia. She played idly with the spoon of her
teacup, her eyes on the coals.

"As you say--who knows?" murmured the ot