on whom freedom
had come as a wild freshet. Thousands must sink, thousands starve, for
all were drunk with its cruel delusions. Yea, on this deluge the whole
Southern social world, with its two distinct divisions--the shining
upper--the dark nether--was reeling and careening, threatening, each
moment, to turn once and forever wrong side up, a hope-forsaken wreck.
To avert this, to hold society on its keel, must be the first and
constant duty of whoever saw, as he did, the fearful peril. So, then,
this that he had done--and prayed that he might never have to do
again--was, underneath all its outward hideousness, a more than right, a
generous, deed. For a man who, taking all the new risks, still taught
these poor, base, dangerous creatures to keep the only place they could
keep with safety to themselves or their superiors, was to them the only
truly merciful man.

He drifted into revery. Thoughts came so out of harmony with this line
of reasoning that he could only dismiss them as vagaries. Was sleep
returning? No, he laid wide awake, frowning with the pain of his wound.
Yet he must have drowsed at last, for when suddenly he saw his wife
standing, draped in some dark wrapping, hearkening at one of the open
windows, the moon was sinking.

He sat up and heard faintly, far afield, the voices of Leviticus,
Virginia, Willis, Trudie, and Johanna, singing one of the wild, absurd,
and yet passionately significant hymns of the Negro Christian worship.
Distance drowned the words, but an earlier familiarity supplied them to
the grossly syncopated measures of the tune which, soft and clear, stole
in at the open window:

"Rise in dat mawnin', an' rise in dat mawnin',
Rise in dat mawnin', an' fall upon yo' knees.
Bow low, an' a-bow low, an' a-bow low a little bit longah,
Bow low, an' a-bow low; sich a conquerin' king!"

The eyes of wife and husband met in a long gaze.

"They're coming this way," he faltered.

She slowly shook her head.

"My love----" But she motioned for silence and said, solemnly:

"They're leaving us."

"They're wrong!" he murmured in grieved indignation.

"Oh, who is right?" she sadly asked.

"They shall not treat us so!" exclaimed he. He would have sprung to his
feet, but she turned upon him suddenly, uplifting her hand, and with a
ring in her voice that made the walls of the chamber ring back, cried,

"No, no! Let them go! They were mine when they were property, and they
are mine