power. Before morning, this battle must be over."

"Great heavens!" exclaimed Agnes, with a fresh burst of passion, so
absorbed by her own thoughts that she disregarded the purport of
Zillah's words. "_His_ child, _his_ sister, and the tool of a slave,--a
noble burden this, to carry on through life!"

She arose and walked toward the door, pale as death, and with her teeth
clenched.

"Where are you going?" inquired Zillah.

"Into the cold, where I can breathe. Do not speak. Let me go!"

"But not down stairs--not into her room!"

"I tell you," answered the girl, hoarse with passion, "I tell you that
it is air, space, a storm, a whirlwind that I want; nothing else will
give back the breath to my lungs!"

She went out fiercely, like the tempest her evil heart evoked.

For an instant the woman Zillah stood still, looking after her; then she
rushed to the door, and called out in a loud whisper,

"Agnes, Agnes, come back!"

But the call was too late. Like a black shadow, Agnes Barker had passed
out of the house.

Zillah reentered the room, looking so white that you would not have
known the face again. She turned the gas full upon her, and, taking a
bowl from the cabinet, poured some colored liquid into it. She placed
the bowl upon the floor, and, kneeling by it, began to lave her hands,
neck, and face in the liquid, leaving them of a nutty darkness. Then she
opened the window, flung out the dye she had used, and proceeded to put
on a front of woolly hair, tangled with grey, over which a Madras
'kerchief was carefully folded. One by one she removed her rich
garments, and directly stood out in dress, gait, and action, the colored
chambermaid who had for months infested Mabel Harrington's home.

The woman went out from the room, locking the door after her. She must
have been very pale, though the color upon her face revealed no trace of
this white terror; but her limbs shook, her knees knocked together, and
her wild eyes grew fearful as she paused in the hall, looking up and
down, to see if it was empty, before she moved away.

The moment Zillah left her chamber door, all became dark in the hall,
for she concealed the light in passing, and moved away as her daughter
had done, still and black, like a retreating cloud.

When Zillah's face was again revealed, it was far down in the coal
vaults under the house. She was upon her knees, filling a small iron
furnace with lumps of charcoal, which she dropped one by one on