The thing that crushed the spirit of the man was not the shock of death with its thousand and one unanswerable questions torturing the soul, but the possibility that his acts had been the cause of the tragedy. Dr. Williams had said to him over and over again:

"Make her will to live and she\'ll recover!"

He had fought this grim battle and won. She had willed to live and was happy. The world had never seemed so beautiful as the day she died. If the cause of her death lay further back in the curious accident which happened at the birth of the child, his soul was clear of guilt.

He held none of the morbid fancies of the super-sensitive mind that would make a father responsible for a fatal outcome in the birth of a babe. God made women to bear children. The only woman to be pitied was the one who could not know the pain, the joy and the danger of this divine hour.

But the one persistent question to which his mind forever returned was whether the shock of his sin had weakened her vitality and caused the return of this old trouble.

The moment he left the grave on the day of her burial, he turned to the old doctor with this grim question. He told him the whole story. He told him every[Pg 164] word she had spoken since they left home. He recounted every hour of reaction and depression, the good and the bad, just as the recording angel might have written it. He ended his recital with the burning question:

"Tell me now, doctor, honestly before God, did I kill her?"

"Certainly not!" was the quick response.

"Don\'t try to shield me. I can stand the truth. I don\'t belong to a race of cowards. After this no pain can ever come but that my soul shall laugh!"

"I\'m honest with you, my boy. I\'ve too much self-respect not to treat you as a man in such an hour. No, if she died as you say, you had nothing to do with it. The seed of death was hiding there behind that slender, graceful throat. I was always afraid of it. And I\'ve always known that if the pain returned she\'d die——"

"You knew that before we left home?"

"Yes. I only hinted the truth. I thought the change might prolong her life, that\'s all."

"You\'re not saying this to cheer me? This is not one of your lies you give for medicine sometimes?"

"No"—the old doctor smiled gravely. "No, shake off this nightmare and go back to your work. Your people are calling you."

He made a desperate effort to readjust himself to life, but somehow at the moment the task was hopeless. He had preached, with all the eloquence of the enthusiasm of youth, that life in itself is always beautiful and always good. He found it was easier to preach a thing than to live it.[Pg 165]

The old house seemed to be empty, and, strange to say, the baby\'s voice didn\'t fill it. He had said to himself that the patter of his little feet and the sound of his laughter would fill its halls, make it possible to live, and get used to the change. But it wasn\'t so. Somehow the child\'s laughter made him faint. The sound of his voice made the memory of his mother an intolerable pain. His voice in the morning was the first thing he heard and it drove him from the house. At night when he knelt to lisp his prayers her name was a stab, and when he waved his little hands and said: "Good night, Papa!" he could remember nothing save the last picture that had burned itself into his soul.

He tried to feed and care for a canary she had kept in her room, but when he cocked his little yellow head and gave the loving plaintive cry with which he used to greet her, the room became a blur and he staggered out unable to return for a day.

The silent sympathy of his dog, as he thrust his nose between his hands and wagged his shaggy tail, was the only thing that seemed to count for anything.

"I understand, Don, old boy," he cried, lifting his paw into his lap and slipping his arm around the woolly neck, "you\'re telling me that you love me always, good or bad, right or wrong. I understand, and it\'s very sweet to know it. But I\'ve somehow lost the way on life\'s field, old boy. The night is coming on and I can\'t find the road home. You remember that feeling when we were lost sometimes in strange countries hunting together, you and I?"

Don licked his hand and wagged his tail again.

He rose and walked through the lawn, radiant now with the glory of spring. But the flowers had become[Pg 166] the emblems of Death not Life and their odor was oppressive.

A little black boy, in a ragged shirt and torn trousers, barefooted and bareheaded, stopped at the gate, climbed up and looked over with idle curiosity at his aimless wandering. He giggled and asked:

"Ye don\'t need no boy fer nothin, do ye?"

The man\'s sombre eyes suddenly lighted with a look of hate that faded in a moment and he made no reply. What had this poor little ragamuffin, his face smeared with dirt and his eyes rolling with childish mirth, to do with tragic problems which his black skin symbolized! He was there because a greedy race of empire builders had need of his labor. He had remained to torment and puzzle and set at naught the wisdom of statesmen for the same reason. For the first time in his life he asked himself a startling question:

"Do I really need him?"

Before the shock that threw his life into ruins he would have answered as every Southerner always answered at that time:

"Certainly I need him. His labor is indispensable to the South."

But to-day, back of the fire that flashed in his eyes, ther............