ule of the Puritan
than under that of the lascivious house of Jeroboam which now afflicts
England for her sins. But the Lord hath a controversy with them! An east
wind shall come up, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the
wilderness! They shall be moved from their places! They shall lick the
dust like serpents, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the
earth, and be utterly destroyed! Think you not as I do, friend?" he
asked, turning suddenly upon Landless.

"I think," said Landless, "that you are talking that which, if
overheard, might give you a deeper scar than any you bear."

"But who is to hear? the tobacco, the Lord in heaven, and you. The
senseless plant will keep counsel, the Lord is not like to betray his
servant, and as for you, friend,--" he looked long and searchingly at
Landless. "Despite the place you come from, I do not think you one to
bring a man into trouble for being bold enough to say what you dare only
think."

Landless returned the look. "No," he said quietly. "You need have no
fear of me."

"I fear no one," said the other proudly.

Presently he craned his long body across the plant between them until
his lips almost touched the ear of the younger man.

"Shall you try to escape?" he whispered.

A smile curled Landless's lip. "Very probably I shall," he said dryly.
He looked down the long lines of broad green leaves at the toiling
figures, black and white, dull peasants at best, scoundrels at worst;
and beyond to the huddled cabins of the quarter, and to the great house,
rising fair and white from orchard and garden; seeing, as in a dream, a
man, young in years but old in sorrow, disgraced, outcast, friendless,
alone, creeping down a vista of weary years, day after day of
soul-deadening toil, of association with the mean and the vile, of
shameful submission to whip and finger. Escape! The word had beaten
through brain and heart so long and so persistently, that at times he
feared lest he should cry it aloud.

Win-Grace Porringer shook his head.

"It's not an easy thing to escape from a Virginia plantation. With dogs
and with horses they hunt you down, yea, with torches and boats. They
band themselves together against the fleeing sparrow. They call in the
heathen to their aid. And it is a fearful land, for great rivers bar
your way, and forests push you back, and deep quagmires clutch you and
hold you until the men of blood come up. And when you are taken they
cruelly malt