come and save it!"

There was a strained intensity in the doctor's low voice that struck
Carteret, in spite of his own pre-occupation. He thought he heard, too,
from the adjoining room, the sound of some one sobbing softly. There was
some mystery here which he could not fathom unaided.

Miller turned to the door behind him and threw it open. On the white
cover of a low cot lay a childish form in the rigidity of death, and by
it knelt, with her back to the door, a woman whose shoulders were shaken
by the violence of her sobs. Absorbed in her grief, she did not turn, or
give any sign that she had recognized the intrusion.

"There, Major Carteret!" exclaimed Miller, with the tragic eloquence of
despair, "there lies a specimen of your handiwork! There lies _my_ only
child, laid low by a stray bullet in this riot which you and your paper
have fomented; struck down as much by your hand as though you had held
the weapon with which his life was taken!"

"My God!" exclaimed Carteret, struck with horror. "Is the child dead?"

"There he lies," continued the other, "an innocent child,--there he lies
dead, his little life snuffed out like a candle, because you and a
handful of your friends thought you must override the laws and run this
town at any cost!--and there kneels his mother, overcome by grief. We
are alone in the house. It is not safe to leave her unattended. My duty
calls me here, by the side of my dead child and my suffering wife! I
cannot go with you. There is a just God in heaven!--as you have sown, so
may you reap!"

Carteret possessed a narrow, but a logical mind, and except when
confused or blinded by his prejudices, had always tried to be a just
man. In the agony of his own predicament,--in the horror of the
situation at Miller's house,--for a moment the veil of race prejudice
was rent in twain, and he saw things as they were, in their correct
proportions and relations,--saw clearly and convincingly that he had no
standing here, in the presence of death, in the home of this stricken
family. Miller's refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he
could not blame the doctor for his stand. He was indeed conscious of a
certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power
of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his
own wrongs. In Dr. Miller's place he would have done the same thing.
Miller had spoken the truth,--as he had sown, so must he reap! He could
not e