ror and of ignorance,
Made rank with superstition and with crime.

Yet though the fruit was bitter to the core,
Many there were who died for love of it.
O, many they who listen through long nights
To hear a footstep that will never come.
There is not a flower along the border blown,
From Lookout Mountain to the Chesapeake,
But has in it the blood of North and South.

IV.

Karagwe went back, and on a paper wrote,--
"Your dog has harmed me not, and why should you,
That I have never wronged, plot harm to me?
You made me slave, you sold away my bride,
And now you set your hounds upon my track,
Because I seek the freedom that is mine.
Though you have wronged me, still I do you good,
For in an oak, the largest of the grove,
Upon the cotton-field of Richard Wain,
Hid in a hollow near the second limb,
Is the lost deed that holds your house and lands."
The paper fastened round the hound's strong neck,
The negro bade him go, and forth he went;
And Earl read what the slave had written down,
And that day found the deed hid in the tree,
And that day ceased pursuing any more.

For two long weeks the negro in the swamps
Wandered toward the North, living at times
On berries and on fruit. Above him leaned
The tall trees, bower-like 'neath their wrestling arms;
Beneath, the murky waters, black as death,
Stirred only to the plunge of venomed things.
The long, seared grasses clung to every bough
Whose trailing robe hung near the sluggish lymph.
And here and there, among the savage moss,
Blossomed alone some snowy gold-spired flower,
Like God's own church found in a heathen land.
The birds o'erhead, that, plumaged like the morn,
Caroled their sweetness, sang the holy psalms.

V.

But now across his path the negro found
A belt of water falling with the tide.
Two heavy logs he lashed, and launched them out,
Then, with a pole for help in case of need,
Sprang on the float, and drifted down the stream.
Thus for two days he drifted, eating naught
Except the berries growing near the shore.
Then on a cool, bright morning, when the wind
And tide agreed, he saw again the sea.
Far off a buoy was tossing on the waves,
Much like the red heart of the joyful deep--
Much like a heart upon a sea of life;
And ships were in the offing, sailing on
Like the vague ships that with our hopes and fears
Put from their harbors to return no more.

VI.

The raft went oceanward. The negro ra