rude--half savage if you will--when men were
rough and harsh with each other, therefore, with their belongings."

"Therefore, with their belongings!" she repeated, bitterly, "and in
your own age all that is changed?"

"Certainly."

"Certainly!" she agreed. "Slaves are no longer burned for
insubordination, because masters have grown too wise to burn money!
But they have some laws they use now instead of the torch and the whip
of those old crude days. From their book of laws they read the
commandment: _'Go you out then, and of the heathen about you, buy
bondmen and bondmaids that they be servants of your household;'_ and
again it is commanded: _'Servants be obedient unto your masters!'_ The
torch is no longer needed when those fettered souls are taught God
has decreed their servitude. God has cursed them before they were
born, and under that curse they must bend forever!"

"You doubt even the religion of my people?" he demanded.

"Yes!"

"You doubt the divinity of those laws?"

"Yes!"

"Judithe!"

"Yes!" she repeated, a certain dauntless courage in her voice and
bearing. She was no longer the girl he had loved and married; she was
a strange, wild, beautiful creature, whose tones he seemed to hear for
the first time. "A thousand times--yes! I doubt any law and every law
shackling liberty of thought and freedom of people! And the poison of
that accursed system has crept into your own blood until, even to me,
you pretend, and deny the infamy that exists today, and of which you
are aware!"

"Infamy! How dare you use that word?" and his eyes flamed with anger
at the accusation, but she raised her hand, and spoke more quietly.

"You remember the story you heard here today--the story of your guest
and guardian, who sold the white child of his own brother? and the day
when that was done is not so long past! It is so close that the child
is now only a girl of twenty-three, the girl who was educated by her
father's brother that she might prove a more desirable addition to
your bondslaves!"

"God in heaven!" he muttered, as he drew back and stared at her. "Your
knowledge of those things, of the girl's age, which _I_ did not know!
Where have you gained it all? When you heard so much you must know I
was not aware of the purchase of the girl, but that does not matter
now. Answer my questions! Your words, your manner; what do they mean?
What has inspired this fury in you? Answer--I command you!"

_"'Servants, be obedie