to come, with the dead hatred through all of
the pitiless man above him,--with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter
thought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,--of the
corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th' Alabam',"--of
the scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he really
owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she was
born. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went back
to Lois. It was all good, there, to go back to. What a little chub
she used to be! Remembering, with bitter remorse, how all his life he
had meant to try and do better, on her account, but had kept putting
off and putting off until now. And now---- Did nothing lie before him
but to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never had
learned better, and was a "dam' nigger"?

"I'll NOT leave my girl!" he muttered, going up and down,--"I'll NOT
leave my girl!"

If Holmes did sleep above him, the trial of the day, of which we have
seen nothing, came back sharper in sleep. While the strong self in the
man lay torpid, whatever holier power was in him came out, undaunted by
defeat, and unwearied, and took the form of dreams, those slighted
messengers of God, to soothe and charm and win him out into fuller,
kindlier life. Let us hope that they did so win him; let us hope that
even in that unreal world the better nature of the man triumphed at
last, and claimed its reward before the terrible reality broke upon him.

Lois, over in the damp, fresh-smelling lumber-yard, sat coiled up in
one of the creviced houses made by the jutting boards. She remembered
how she used to play in them, before she went into the mill. The
mill,--even now, with the vague dread of some uncertain evil to come,
the mill absorbed all fear in its old hated shadow. Whatever danger
was coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused,
blurred way of thinking. It loomed up now, with the square patch of
ashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss.
In Lois's hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended monster.
Her crushed brain, her unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly to
the mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of any
remorseless power that wielded it. It was a monster, she thought,
through the sleepy, dreading night,--a monster that kept her wakeful
with a dull, mysterious terror.

When the night grew sultry