u look;
just tell me your soul is a lily, like your face."

Beryl stooped, put her hand on the turbaned head, and bending it back,
so as to look down into the swimming eyes, answered:

"If I had died when I was a month old, my baby soul would not have
faced God any more innocent of crime then, than I am to-day. I had no
more to do with taking General Darrington's money and his life, than
the archangels in Heaven."

"Bless God! Now I am satisfied. Now I see my way clare. But it sets my
blood afire to see you here; it's a burning shame to put my dear young
Mistiss' child in this beasts' cage. I can't help thinking of that poor
beautiful white deer, what Marster found crippled, down at our 'Bend'
Plantation, that some vagabond had shot. Marster fotch it up home, and
of all the pitifulist sights!"

Dyce had risen, and covering her face with her white apron, she wept
for some minutes.

"Are you not the wife of Bedney, who saved my mother's life, when the
barn burned?"

"Yes, honey, I am Mam' Dyce, and if I am spared, I will try to save
your'n. That is what has brung me here. You are 'cused of the robb'ry
and the murder, and you have denied it in the court; but chile, the
lie-yers are aworking day and night fur to hang you, and little is made
of much, on your side, and much is spun out of little, on theirn. They
are more cunning than foxes, and bloodthirstier than panters, and they
no more git tired than the spiders, that spin and piece a web as fast
as you break it. Three nights ago, I got down on my knees, and I kissed
a little pink morocco slipper what your Ma wore the day when she took
her first step from my arm to her own mother's knees, and I swore a
solemn oath, if I could help free Miss Ellie's child, I would do it.
Now I want to ask you one thing. Did you lose anything that day you
come to our house, and had the talk with old Marster?"

"Nothing, but my peace and happiness."

"Are you shore you didn't drap your hank'cher?"

"Yes, I am sure I did not, because I wrapped it around some
chrysanthemums I gathered as I went away."

"Well, a lady's hank'cher was found in Marster's room, and it did smell
of chloryform. Bedney picked it up, and we said nothing and laid low,
and hid the thing; but that Godforsaken and predestinated sinner, Miss
Angeline, kept sarching and eavesdrapping, and set the lie-yers on the
scent, and they have 'strained Bedney on peril of jailing him, to
perduce it. When it got into their