"My God!" her silent soul was shrieking within, "why doesn't the
coward--"

And then the "coward" did. The whip was whirring in the air again; but
it never fell. A jagged stone in the boy's hand struck true, and the
overseer plunged with a grunt into the black furrow. In blank dismay,
Zora came back to her senses.

"Poor child!" she gasped, as she saw the boy flying in wild terror over
the fields, with hue and cry behind him.

"Poor child!--running to the penitentiary--to shame and hunger and
damnation!"

She remembered the rector in Mrs. Vanderpool's library, and his
question that revealed unfathomable depths of ignorance: "Really, now,
how do you account for the distressing increase in crime among your
people?"

She swung into the great road trembling with the woe of the world in her
eyes. Cruelty, poverty, and crime she had looked in the face that
morning, and the hurt of it held her heart pinched and quivering. A
moment the mists in her eyes shut out the shadows of the swamp, and the
roaring in her ears made a silence of the world.

Before she found herself again she dimly saw a couple sauntering along
the road, but she hardly noticed their white faces until the little
voice of the girl, raised timidly, greeted her.

"Howdy, Zora."

Zora looked. The girl was Emma, and beside her, smiling, stood a
half-grown white man. It was Emma, Bertie's child; and yet it was not,
for in the child of other days Zora saw for the first time the dawning
woman.

And she saw, too, the white man. Suddenly the horror of the swamp was
upon her. She swept between the couple like a gust, gripping the child's
arm till she paled and almost whimpered.

"I--I was just going on an errand for Miss Smith!" she cried.

Looking down into her soul, Zora discerned its innocence and the fright
shining in the child's eyes. Her own eyes softened, her grip became a
caress, but her heart was hard.

The young man laughed awkwardly and strolled away. Zora looked back at
him and the paramount mission of her life formed itself in her mind. She
would protect this girl; she would protect all black girls. She would
make it possible for these poor beasts of burden to be decent in their
toil. Out of protection of womanhood as the central thought, she must
build ramparts against cruelty, poverty, and crime. All this in
turn--but now and first, the innocent girlhood of this daughter of shame
must be rescued from the devil. It was her duty, her heri