indow reading from the prayerbook. Often the little settlement was
without a clergyman and the owner of the place himself conducted the
service. Now there was the rustle of people rising to their feet and the
morning's devotion was done.

In the background where she could see, yet not be seen, Hertha watched
the congregation as it emerged from the church. It was a small
group--the Merryvales and some dozen neighbors from up and down the
river. She knew them all, and yet this morning they took on sinister
significance. The stylishly dressed women, the men in their well-fitting
clothes, the gestures and modulations of voice, these were not of her
world. As they went down the path she saw one of the women beckon to Lee
Merryvale, who turned, all attention, to listen to what she had to tell
him. With head bent toward his companion, he walked on and at a turn of
the path was gone. Soon their voices, too, died away and there was
nothing left but the empty path and the endless murmur of the wind among
the pines.

Erect, head thrown back, hands clenched, the colored girl stood for a
moment staring down the path. Her lips parted as though to cry out
against the cruelty that denied her the right to walk among these white
people, white herself, by the side of the man she loved. But no cry
came, and presently her hands relaxed, her face resumed its pallor, and
with drooping head she turned toward home.

Always quiet, at the afternoon dinner her preoccupation was so
noticeable that her mother, the dishes cleared away, tried to draw her
from it.

"Come an' sit wid me on de step, honey," she called. "You don' want ter
go an' do mo' work like Ellen. I neber knowed a chile befo' so greedy.
She can't help eatin' up oder folks' jobs. You come hyar an' talk ter
yo' mammy."

"You talk to me," Hertha said.

"What woll I talk 'bout?"

"Tell me about it again. Tell me about how I came to you."

The mother gave a big happy laugh. "You allays likes dat story, don'
you, honey? An' I likes it too. Reckon dis would hab been a poor home
widout you was in it. Well, sit hyar an' I tell it ter yer, jes' as
'twas."

Looking down on the little garden, gay with autumnal flowers, Hertha
took the step below her mother's on the porch so that she might lean
against her. As she sat there, listening to the rich drawling voice, she
rested as she had not rested before that day. With mammy one felt safe.
Both she and Tom had noticed it.

"Well, honey