ed as
strange and weird to Ben as though a stone image had waked to speech.
Spellbound, he stood in the doorway, and listened to this ghost of a
voice long dead.

"Your uncle came with the money and left it, and went away. Only he
and I knew where it was. But I never told you! I could have spoken at
any time for twenty-five years, but I never told you! I have
waited--I have waited for this moment! I have gone into the woods and
fields and talked to myself by the hour, that I might not forget how
to talk--and I have waited my turn, and it is here and now!"

Ben hung breathlessly upon her words. He drew back beyond her range of
vision, lest she might see him, and the spell be broken. Now, he
thought, she would tell where the gold was hidden!

"He came," she said, "and left the gold--two heavy bags of it, and a
letter for you. An hour later _he came back and took it all away_,
except the letter! The money was here one hour, but in that hour you
had me whipped, and for that you have spent twenty-five years in
looking for nothing--something that was not here! I have had my
revenge! For twenty-five years I have watched you look for--nothing;
have seen you waste your time, your property, your life, your
mind--for nothing! For ah, Mars' Ma'colm, you had me whipped--_by
another man_!"

A shadow of reproach crept into the old man's eyes, over which the
mists of death were already gathering.

"Yes, Viney," he whispered, "you have had your revenge! But I was
sorry, Viney, for what I did, and you were not. And I forgive you,
Viney; but you are unforgiving--even in the presence of death."

His voice failed, and his eyes closed for the last time. When she saw
that he was dead, by a strange revulsion of feeling the wall of
outraged pride and hatred and revenge, built upon one brutal and
bitterly repented mistake, and labouriously maintained for half a
lifetime in her woman's heart that even slavery could not crush,
crumbled and fell and let pass over it in one great and final flood
the pent-up passions of the past. Bursting into tears--strange tears
from eyes that had long forgot to weep--old Viney threw herself down
upon her knees by the bedside, and seizing old Malcolm's emaciated
hand in both her own, covered it with kisses, fervent kisses, the
ghosts of the passionate kisses of their distant youth.

With a feeling that his presence was something like sacrilege, Ben
stole away and left her with her dead--the dead master and