ng poker with a pack
of greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder to
the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the
darkness. A putrid odour met them at the door. She drew back,
trembling.

"Come here!" he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. "Women as fair and
pure as you have come into dens like this,--and never gone away. Does
it make your delicate breath faint? And you a follower of the meek and
lowly Jesus! Look here! and here!"

The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers,
whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep, or smoking, on the floor, and
set up a chorus of whining begging when they entered. Half-naked
children crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed walls there was
hung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by, Pio Nono, crook in
hand, with the usual inscription, "Feed my sheep." The Doctor looked
at it.

"'Tu es Petrus, et super hanc'---- Good God! what IS truth?" he
muttered, bitterly.

He dragged her closer to the women, through the darkness and foul smell.

"Look in their faces," he whispered. "There is not one of them that is
not a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the centuries of serfdom
and superstition through which their blood has crawled. Come
closer,--here."

In the corner slept a heap of half-clothed blacks. Going on the
underground railroad to Canada. Stolid, sensual wretches, with here
and there a broad, melancholy brow, and desperate jaws. One little
pickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes, and laughed at them.

"So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!"

Margret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked at
her.

"Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down,
and come on."

They went out of the door. Margret stopped, looking back.

"Did I call it a bit of hell? It 's only a glimpse of the under-life
of America,--God help us!--where all men are born free and equal."

The air in the passage grew fouler. She leaned back faint and
shuddering. He did not heed her. The passion of the man, the terrible
pity for these people, came out of his soul now, writhing his face, and
dulling his eyes.

"And you," he said, savagely, "you sit by the road-side, with help in
your hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrel
with your God, because that mass of selfishness has left you,--because
you are balked in your puny hope! Look