life on a mere suspicion?"

She almost flew at him in her frenzy, but the darkness so shielded her
that he did not see the movement, which was as well. She controlled
herself instantly, and only said in reply, "Thou hast not been always so
careful of white life, mon ami--so unwilling to shed white blood."

"Ah, bah!" retorted he: "that was when I could not be detected, and
when more than life was in question. But now to kill this man would be
to suffer death myself in the next hour, and to know that my wife and
children were punished as well. Besides," he continued, as if trying to
reason with her, "you have told me nothing which convinces me that what
you say is true."

"Listen, then," she said, raising her head, which had sunk upon her
breast. "You do not believe that he is starving her to death: you think
she has all the food required by one in her weak and perishing
condition. You think her cries, her prayers, her agony of desire for
nourishment--for nourishment!--are only the result of sickness, and that
if she had it she could not eat. Bien! Every morning, when I go into her
room to dress her blisters with fresh poultices, I find the old ones
torn off and eaten up! Tell me, Pierre, have any of our kin, in their
worst straits of hunger and suffering, done worse than that?"

She spoke in a low voice, but it was freighted with such an intensity of
horror and misery that the man beside her could not speak for an
instant. When he did, he said in tones of the deepest feeling, "Ma
pauvre maitresse! ma pauvre maitresse!"

"Do you still refuse?" hissed Marcelline.

The answer was compassionate, but resolved: "I do, Marcelline. Not even
for her sake can I risk all. _You_ know I have nearly saved enough money
to buy my freedom. Once free, I shall soon purchase Sophie and the young
ones: I cannot abandon such hopes even to save her."

There was a moment's silence. "May God help me, then!" said the woman as
she rose, "for I swear by the Blessed Sacrament to save her if she be
still alive--to revenge her if she be dead."

* * * * *

Three days later a long funeral cortege passed from the gates of the
Levassour plantation and took its way along the dusty road toward the
Catholic church of the settlement, some three miles off. In and out
between the massive green walls of shining Cherokee rose-vines, which
formed impenetrable barriers on either side of the way, wound the long
line of old-f