room as the elder brother held the younger's life suspended
in his hand, while wavering between a dim hope and a deadly hate. In
the whirl of thoughts that went on in my brain, only one was clear
enough to act upon. I must prevent murder, if I could,--but how? What
could I do up there alone, locked in with a dying man and a
lunatic?--for any mind yielded utterly to any unrighteous impulse is
mad while the impulse rules it. Strength I had not, nor much courage,
neither time nor wit for stratagem, and chance only could bring me help
before it was too late. But one weapon I possessed,--a tongue,--often
a woman's best defence: and sympathy, stronger than fear, gave me power
to use it. What I said Heaven only knows, but surely Heaven helped me;
words burned on my lips, tears streamed from my eyes, and some good
angel prompted me to use the one name that had power to arrest my
hearer's hand and touch his heart. For at that moment I heartily
believed that Lucy lived, and this earnest faith roused in him a like
belief.

He listened with the lowering look of one in whom brute instinct was
sovereign for the time,--a look that makes the noblest countenance
base. He was but a man,--a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life
had few joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no
home, no love. What future would this crime mar? and why should he
deny himself that sweet, yet bitter morsel called revenge? How many
white men, with all New England's freedom, culture, Christianity, would
not have felt as he felt then? Should I have reproached him for a human
anguish, a human longing for redress, all now left him from the ruin of
his few poor hopes? Who had taught him that self-control,
self-sacrifice, are attributes that make men masters of the earth and
lift them nearer heaven? Should I have urged the beauty of
forgiveness, the duty of devout submission? He had no religion, for he
was no saintly "Uncle Tom," and Slavery's black shadow seemed to darken
all the world to him and shut out God. Should I have warned him of
penalties, of judgments, and the potency of law? What did he know of
justice, or the mercy that should temper that stern virtue, when every
law, human and divine, had been broken on his hearthstone? Should I
have tried to touch him by appeals to filial duty, to brotherly love?
How had his appeals been answered? What memories had father and brother
stored up in his heart to plead for either now?