hat
gathered wildness as it grew. Above all flew the dream, the phantasy,
the memory of the past, the vision of the future. Over and over she
whispered to herself: "This is not the End; this can not be the End."

Somehow, somewhere, would come salvation. Yet what it would be and what
she expected she did not know. She sought the Way, but what way and
whither she did not know, she dared not dream.

One thing alone lay in her wild fancy like a great and wonderful fact
dragging the dream to earth and anchoring it there. That was the Silver
Fleece. Like a brooding mother, Zora had watched it. She knew how the
gin had been cleaned for its pressing and how it had been baled apart
and carefully covered. She knew how proud Colonel Cresswell was of it
and how daily he had visitors to see it and finger the wide white wound
in its side.

"Yes, sir, grown on my place, by my niggers, sir!" he assured them; and
they marvelled.

To Zora's mind, this beautiful baled fibre was hers; it typified
happiness; it was an holy thing which profane hands had stolen. When it
came back to her (as come it must, she cried with clenched hands) it
would bring happiness; not the great Happiness--that was gone
forever--but illumination, atonement, and something of the power and the
glory. So, involuntarily almost, she haunted the cotton storehouse,
flitting like a dark and silent ghost in among the workmen, greeting
them with her low musical voice, warding them with the cold majesty of
her eyes; each day afraid of some last parting, each night
triumphant--it was still there!

The Colonel--Zora already forgotten--rode up to the Cresswell Oaks,
pondering darkly. It was bad enough to contemplate Helen's marriage in
distant prospect, but the sudden, almost peremptory desire for marrying
at Eastertide, a little less than two months away, was absurd. There
were "business reasons arising from the presidential campaign in the
fall," John Taylor had telegraphed; but there was already too much
business in the arrangement to suit the Colonel. With Harry it was
different. Indeed it was his own quiet suggestion that made John Taylor
hurry matters.

Harry trusted to the novelty of his father's new wealth to make the
latter complacent; he himself felt an impatient longing for the haven of
a home. He had been too long untethered. He distrusted himself. The
devil within was too fond of taking the bit in his teeth. He would
remember to his dying day one awful shr