except perhaps in
the hall.

Eight o'clock found her in the parlor, the lamp sending a circle of
light from the round table in the middle of the room, the last glow of
twilight entering through the long windows. Hertha sat at one of them
watching the passers-by, eager and anxious, her heart swelling with love
for her old home and for the people there for whom she was hungry,
hungry as a baby is hungry for its mother's breast. The rooms of the
cabin, empty in her dream, were all inhabited now, the door wide open,
Mammy moving about washing the dishes, Ellen at work setting up sums for
her children at school. Outside the chickens were pecking amid the white
sand. The chords of memory were ringing louder and louder, ringing with
an intensity that came from their long suppression, calling up pictures
of the past, striking now a note of happiness, more often a deeper one
of pain. The life of the last nine months was disappearing, drifting
into a mist of nothingness, and Hertha Williams was sitting in Mrs.
Pickens' boarding-house parlor, watching for a substantial earthly
presence out of the life of the past.

"Miss Ogilvie," a voice said from the hallway, "there's a colored boy
downstairs who says he's got something for you. He says he's Tom."

"Tom!" said Hertha with a start. Her surprise was no dissimulation. She
had surely expected to see him before he entered the house and she could
scarcely believe he was really in it. "Why, yes," she stammered, "if
it's Tom he's from my old home. Tell him to come up here."

"Tom," the cook called as she went down the stairway, "the young lady
says you're to come along." And with this invitation she went back to
her work.

Hertha, as she stood there in the parlor, her hands on her boy's
shoulders, looking into his face, his good face with its serious
forehead, its kindly mouth, believed that even Dick, were he there, must
cease his nasty screeching about niggers and see that boys were boys,
black or white, and that here was a young American of whom to be proud.

"Oh, Tom," she said as she sat down, and looked at him where he stood in
front of her, "You're so good to see!" And again, "Oh, Tom, it's so
good, so good to see you!"

"Now you've got to take that chair and tell me every bit of news," she
announced when she had stared her fill.

"Reckon that would take quite a space," he answered cheerfully.

"Sit down," Hertha commanded but with a quaver in her voice.

"Oh, I coul