ion. He stood bending over his pile of stones, pounding
listlessly. Beside him stood a boy of twelve,--yellow, with a hunted,
crafty look. The convict raised his eyes and they met the eyes of the
stranger. The hammer fell from his hands.

The stranger turned slowly toward the automobile and the colonel
introduced him. He had not exactly caught his name, but he mumbled
something as he presented him to his wife and little girl, who were
waiting.

As they whirled away the colonel started to talk, but the stranger had
taken the little girl into his lap and together they conversed in low
tones all the way home.

In some way, they did not exactly know how, they got the impression that
the man was a teacher and, of course, he must be a foreigner. The long,
cloak-like coat told this. They rode in the twilight through the lighted
town and at last drew up before the colonel's mansion, with its
ghost-like pillars.

The lady in the back seat was thinking of the guests she had invited to
dinner and was wondering if she ought not to ask this man to stay. He
seemed cultured and she supposed he was some acquaintance of the
colonel's. It would be rather interesting to have him there, with the
judge's wife and daughter and the rector. She spoke almost before she
thought:

"You will enter and rest awhile?"

The colonel and the little girl insisted. For a moment the stranger
seemed about to refuse. He said he had some business for his father,
about town. Then for the child's sake he consented.

Up the steps they went and into the dark parlor where they sat and
talked a long time. It was a curious conversation. Afterwards they did
not remember exactly what was said and yet they all remembered a certain
strange satisfaction in that long, low talk.

Finally the nurse came for the reluctant child and the hostess
bethought herself:

"We will have a cup of tea; you will be dry and tired."

She rang and switched on a blaze of light. With one accord they all
looked at the stranger, for they had hardly seen him well in the
glooming twilight. The woman started in amazement and the colonel half
rose in anger. Why, the man was a mulatto, surely; even if he did not
own the Negro blood, their practised eyes knew it. He was tall and
straight and the coat looked like a Jewish gabardine. His hair hung in
close curls far down the sides of his face and his face was olive, even
yellow.

A peremptory order rose to the colonel's lips and froze th