post at the foot of the bed, and, passing out of the room, went down
the stairs with deliberate tread, and opened the door.

A negro's face, almost gray in its mad fear, stared into his with a
desperate appeal which the lips could not utter. Dolph drew the man in,
and shut the door behind him. The negro leaned, trembling and exhausted,
against the wall.

"I knowed you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he panted; "I'm feared they
seen me, though--they was mighty clost behind."

[Illustration]

They were close behind him, indeed. In half a minute the roar of the
mob filled the street with one terrible howl and shriek of animal rage,
heard high above the tramp of half a thousand feet; and the beasts of
disorder, gathered from all the city's holes and dens of crime, wild for
rapine and outrage, burst upon them, sweeping up the steps, hammering at
the great doors, crying for the blood of the helpless and the
innocent.

[Illustration: "Have you got a nigger here?"]

Foreign faces, almost all! Irish, mostly; but there were heavy, ignorant
German types of feature uplifted under the gas-light; sallow,
black-mustached Magyar faces; thin, acute, French faces--all with the
stamp of old-world ignorance and vice upon them.

The door opened, and the white-haired old gentleman, erect, haughty,
with brightening eyes, faced the leader of the mob--a great fellow,
black-bearded, who had a space to himself on the stoop, and swung his
broad shoulders from side to side.

"Have you got a nigger here?" he began, and then stopped short, for
Jacob Dolph was looking upon the face of his son.

Vagabond and outcast, he had the vagabond's quick wit, this leader of
infuriate crime, and some one good impulse stirred in him of his
forfeited gentlehood. He turned savagely upon his followers.

"He ain't here!" he roared. "I told you so--I saw him turn the corner."

"Shtap an' burrn the bondholder's house!" yelled a man behind. Eustace
Dolph turned round with a furious, threatening gesture.

"You damned fool!" he thundered; "he's no bondholder--he's one of _us_.
Go on, I tell you! Will you let that nigger get away?"

He half drove them down the steps. The old man stepped out, his face
aflame under his white hair, his whole frame quivering.

"You lie, sir!" he cried; but his voice was drowned in the howl of the
mob as it swept around the corner, forgetting all things else in the
madness of its hideous chase.

When Jacob Dolph returned to his wif