tentions, and had heard the servants' gossip with reference to the
marriage, of which they knew the details long before the principals had
approached the main fact. Frank went away without having received one
smile or heard one word from Rena; but he had seen her: she was happy;
he was content in the knowledge of her happiness. She was doubtless
secure in the belief that her secret was unknown. Why should he, by
revealing his presence, sow the seeds of doubt or distrust in the
garden of her happiness? He sacrificed the deepest longing of a
faithful heart, and went back to the cooper shop lest perchance she
might accidentally come upon him some day and suffer the shock which he
had sedulously spared her.

"I would n' want ter skeer her," he mused, "er make her feel bad, an'
dat's w'at I'd mos' lackly do ef she seed me. She'll be better off wid
me out'n de road. She'll marry dat rich w'ite gent'eman,--he won't
never know de diffe'nce,--an' be a w'ite lady, ez she would 'a' be'n,
ef some ole witch had n' changed her in her cradle. But maybe some
time she'll 'member de little nigger w'at use' ter nuss her w'en she
woz a chile, an' fished her out'n de ole canal, an' would 'a' died fer
her ef it would 'a' done any good."

Very generously too, and with a fine delicacy, he said nothing to Mis'
Molly of his having seen her daughter, lest she might be disquieted by
the knowledge that he shared the family secret,--no great mystery now,
this pitiful secret, but more far-reaching in its consequences than any
blood-curdling crime. The taint of black blood was the unpardonable
sin, from the unmerited penalty of which there was no escape except by
concealment. If there be a dainty reader of this tale who scorns a
lie, and who writes the story of his life upon his sleeve for all the
world to read, let him uncurl his scornful lip and come down from the
pedestal of superior morality, to which assured position and wide
opportunity have lifted him, and put himself in the place of Rena and
her brother, upon whom God had lavished his best gifts, and from whom
society would have withheld all that made these gifts valuable. To
undertake what they tried to do required great courage. Had they
possessed the sneaking, cringing, treacherous character traditionally
ascribed to people of mixed blood--the character which the blessed
institutions of a free slave-holding republic had been well adapted to
foster among them; had they been selfis