ety ladder to the one room, where a
flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odor
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!"

Margaret 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. Margaret 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, whitening 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 at these women. What is their loss, do you
think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life whimpering over your