ould I go too?" Hertha's voice was almost inaudible.

"You, dear? I don't believe we could have a white teacher. The white
people wouldn't stand for it."

"I wouldn't be white," Hertha answered. "I'd be colored."

Ellen turned and kissed her. "I know what you did for Tom. If I worked
until I was a hundred in the meanest spot in the Union I wouldn't be
doing as brave a thing as you have done."

"Amen," Tom said.

"Oh, no!" Hertha gasped a little at their praise. "I was only too
thankful I had the wit to think of what to say in time."

She leaned over and stroked Tom's head, touching gently the wound that
was healed now. "I'm tired of the white world. I'd truly like to go with
you, Sister. Couldn't I?"

Ellen was slow in giving her answer. "It wouldn't be possible," she said
at last. "I want you more than I can ever say, but it wouldn't be
possible. I'm not young or good-looking, and Augusta is blacker and
homelier than I. But you, if you came with us, it would be like putting
a jewel in a room with thieves."

In the silence that followed Hertha felt that her sister had again
pushed her out of her home. And this time there was no sense of
excitement, no wonderment at what the future would bring. She had
entered the white world and knew it now. Before her was a second exile,
a second effort to make her way among strangers; she believed a second
failure. As she looked into the night with dimmed eyes she knew that
Augusta Fairfax, in her rough cabin among hostile people, was not so
lonely as she.

"What are you going to do, Tom?" Ellen asked.

"I haven't made up my mind yet," he answered. "Maybe I'll stay here for
a while, get work somewhere about, an' maybe I'll go back North. There's
a heap o' things to do in New York. General utility man, now, that's a
good job sometimes. I had a friend last winter as worked in a house that
was run by a lot of girls. He had the time of his life! The girls was
all of them at work, in charities and hospitals and I don't know
what-all societies. At night he'd wait on table for dinner, after he'd
cooked it, and learned more'n he'd ever learn if he stayed in school all
his days. He could talk like a book, that man could. And the girls, they
got to relying on him for all sorts o' little things a man can do about
a house. It's a nice way for girls to live, a lot of 'em together. I
reckon a job like that might be fun."

Though he did not look at Hertha she understood his thought for