Front matter (continued 4)

"If you saw Teddy Fitzhugh taught to speak plainly, would you believe?"

"My dear, I'd leave the Presbyterian Church and join the Christian Scientists so quickly my church letter would be torn by the way I'd snatch it."

Carolina laughed and squeezed Aunt Angie's hand, who added with a smile:

"I suppose you think I am as good as caught already, don't you?"

"I hope you are. You can't imagine how much peace it brings."

"Peace! It's something I never have had, child."

"Nor I. But I have it now."

"What does your religion compel you to give up? Peachie absolutely refuses to join the church because it won't allow dancing, and the child loves to dance better than anything in the world. They tell me, too, that she dances like a fairy." Aunt Angie pronounced it "fayry."

"Why, that is one of the best things about Christian Science. It requires you to give up no innocent pleasure. It only cautions one against indulging to excess in anything. Dancing, card-playing, games,--why, some of the best card-players I know are Christian Scientists, but they don't lose their tempers when they lose a game and they don't cheat to win. In fact, one of the most graceful things I have ever seen done was when two ladies tied for the prize--a beautiful gold vase--at a bridge party Addie gave just before she closed her house, and the lady who won had played coolly, well, and won by merit. The other flung herself back in her chair with an exclamation, showing by her suffused face and clenched hands every sign of ill-temper. My sister-in-law brought the prize to the winner, who, with the prettiest grace imaginable, thanked her and then presented it, by Addie's permission, to the vexed lady who had lost. You should have seen the recipient's face! Surprise, humiliation, and cupidity struggled almost audibly for supremacy. She protested feebly, but ended by taking it. A number of others gathered around, attracted by the unusual scene, and suddenly the owner of the vase said to the giver of it: 'I would like to know what church you go to.' 'Well, as none of you know, you may guess,' she answered. They guessed Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal, and finally the recipient of the vase said: 'No, you are all wrong. I believe she is a Christian Scientist, because no one but a Christian Scientist would give up a gold vase!'"

"I like that," said Aunt Angie, promptly. "And I think the churches make a mistake in forbidding innocent pleasures. Oh, why don't they dwell on the good instead of squabbling over the bad?"

"You have described one of the chief differences between the Christian Science and the other churches," cried Carolina. "Why, Aunt Angie, you are a ready-made Scientist!"

"Am I? Well, we shall see. Now tell me when you can go to see Flower. Was Moultrie able to buy Araby for you?"

"No, Mr. Mazyck refused to sell her. But Moultrie has lent me Scintilla until he can find another good horse for me."

"But you especially wanted Araby, didn't you?"

"Yes, because she is a direct descendant of the sire of my grandfather's favourite saddle-horse. And she is simply perfect, Aunt Angie."

"I am afraid Barney Mazyck is hopeless. If he wants a thing, he wants it and is going to keep it."

"I know; but I have not despaired of getting her yet. Perhaps I am just as bent upon getting her as Mr. Barnwell Mazyck is upon keeping her."

"And in that case--"

"Well, I wouldn't put any money on Mr. Mazyck!" laughed Carolina.

In the slight pause which ensued, Carolina could see that Mrs. La Grange was ill at ease. Suddenly she turned to the girl and said:

"My dear, doubtless you think it strange that I do not know beyond a doubt the state of my own little grandson's sight, but--"

"I know," said Carolina, gently. "I have heard."

"Who told you? Some stranger?"

"No, Moultrie told me."

"Ah, then you have heard the truth! It is a terrible grief to us, Carolina. Think of the child! I do not know who my own grandson is descended from!"

"But you will know," said Carolina, earnestly. "And soon. I--we have a right to expect God's harmony in our lives."

Mrs. La Grange looked at her curiously, but only said, with a sigh:

"I am sure I hope you may be right."

It was arranged that Carolina was to meet Mrs. La Grange at Flower's the next afternoon at three o'clock.

"Can't you go in the morning?" asked Mrs. La Grange.

"I have an appointment with the architect from Charleston and the builders at Guildford at ten. We wouldn't get through in time, I am afraid, for there will be so much to discuss."

"Won't you be too tired?"

"I never get tired. There is rest in action for me."

Mrs. La Grange shook her head, but not in disapproval.

"I hope I am going to like it. If I like all of it as well as I do the sample bits you have fed me with, I think, as you say, you may find that I have been a Scientist all my life without knowing it."

Mrs. La Grange looked into the girl's pure, beautiful face scrutinizingly, as if to learn her secret of happiness, and, as she did so, she was surprised to see it suffused by a blush which rose in delicate waves to her hair. Looking about in surprise for a cause, Mrs. La Grange saw her son Moultrie approaching. Could Carolina have recognized his step without seeing him, and was that blush for Moultrie?

The question could not be answered at once, nor did she see them together the next day, for Carolina was late in keeping her appointment, and, by the time she arrived, the awful truth was known. Mrs. La Grange had been so overcome that Moultrie was obliged to take her home.

The moment Carolina rode up to the house, she knew that something had happened. The house, a mere cabin, was ominously quiet, and no one came to meet her.

She dismounted hurriedly, fastened Scintilla to the fence, and ran up the steps. No one answered her knock. She pushed open the door and entered.

At first she saw no one, but presently she heard heavy breathing, and, crouching on the floor, in the darkest corner of the room, she saw Flower, holding the still form of her baby in her arms. Her posture and the glare in her eyes were tigerish.

With a low cry, Carolina sprang to her side.

"Oh, Flower, darling! What is the matter with your baby?"

"You may take him," said Flower, dully. "You care! You cared yesterday. I can tell. She only cares because Arthur is a La Grange. You will care just because he a helpless little blind baby. Oh! oh!"

"Not blind, Flower! Don't say it. Don't think it. Your baby sees."

"No, Cousin Carol. You are good and kind, but Mrs. La Grange made me see for myself. We took a candle and held it so close to his eyes we nearly burned his little face--"

"You?" cried Carolina. "Were you in the room?"

"That's what Moultrie said, but you don't either of you know. When you have a child of your own, you will both understand that a mother can't keep away. She must know the worst, and she must be there when it happens."

"Oh, poor Flower! Poor child!" cried Carolina, weeping unrestrainedly. She cuddled the baby's face in her neck, and Flower watched her apathetically. Flower's face was suffused from stormy weeping, but she had wept herself out.

"And you had to bear this all alone, poor lamb!"

"I wanted to be alone! I wanted her to go. They meant to be kind, but they don't love me, and they don't love my little baby. I would rather be alone. Who could I send for--the priest? When he predicted it?"

"What did he predict?" asked Carolina, quickly.

"He was very angry because we went to New York to be married. He lost fifty dollars by it. That is what he charges even poor people like me. And because I married a heretic, and because I was not married by a priest, he cursed me and my offspring. Then--" she broke off suddenly and cried: "Oh, why do I tell it all? Why do I trust even you?"

"Because you know that I can help you," said Carolina, gravely.

"No one can help me--not even God!"

"Say what you were going to," urged Carolina.

"Well, the child is bewitched. Every time there is a thunder-storm, or if I am even left alone with the baby, like to-day, when I let Aunt Tempy have her afternoon--there she is now!"

With a shriek of terror she pointed to the window, and Carolina looked just in time to see a dark face disappear from view. She ran to the door, but nothing could be seen. Not a sound could be heard.

"It is the voodoo!" whispered Flower. "That face always comes. Once I saw it in the room, bending over the cradle when the baby was asleep. But I never can catch her. Aunt Tempy has seen her, so has Winfield. She has cast an evil spirit over my baby."

"Her face looked kind--it even looked worried," thought Carolina to herself, but she said nothing to Flower. She only sat rocking the sleeping baby, wiping the tears which rolled down her cheeks at the sight of the mother's anguish.

"Flower," she said, suddenly, "did you ever see Gladys Yancey before Miss Sue took her North?"

"Heaps of times."

"Did you ever hear how she was cured?"

"Why, Moultrie told Winfield that it was a new kind of religion that did it, and Winfield just hollered and laughed."

"Well, if I could prove to you that your baby could be made to see, would you holler and laugh?"

"I reckon I wouldn't. I'd kiss your feet."

"The only trouble," murmured Carolina, half to herself, "is that you are a Roman Catholic. We do not like to interfere with them."

"I am not a Roman Catholic," said Flower. "The lady who brought me up, and whom I was taught to believe was my aunt, was a Catholic, but I never was baptized. I believe Father Hennessey knows who I am, and that, if he would, he could clear up the mystery of my birth and give me back my happiness. But he never will until I join his church. He told me so."

"Is he an old man?" asked Carolina.

"Oh, a very old man. He must be over eighty,"

A slight pause ensued. Then Carolina said: "Would you like to hear of this new religion?"

"If it will give my baby eyes, Cousin Carolina, how can you even stop to ask?"

"Oh, my dear, it is only because we are taught to go cautiously,--to be sure our help is wanted before we offer."

"Well, offer it to me. I want your help with all my soul!"

She rose from her corner and came and sat at Carolina's feet. Something of Carolina's sincerity, which always appealed to people, moved her to believe that Carolina could help her. Flower's mind, too, though it may sound like an anomaly, had been trained by her aunt's Catholicism to believe in signs and wonders, and her superstitions had been carefully educated. Therefore, when a more analytical mind might have hesitated to believe that material help for a supposed hopeless affliction could come from religion, instead of from a knife or a drug, which even the most skeptical may see and handle and thus believe, Flower, by her very childishness, held up a receptive mind for the planting of the seed of an immortal truth.

The gravity of the situation caused Carolina a moment's wrestle with error. The burning eyes of the young mother fastened on Carolina's face with such agonizing belief,--the feeble flutterings of the sleeping baby in her arms terrified her for a brief second. Then she lifted her heart to the boundless source of supply for every human need, and in a moment she felt quieted and could begin.

"Flower," she said, "do you believe in God?"

"Of course I do."

"Did you ever read your Bible?"

"No."

"Have you one?"

"No."

"Will you promise to read it if I will give you one?"

"I will do whatever you want me to."

Carolina hesitated a moment.

"Will your husband object to your trying Christian Science with the baby?"

"I don't know--yes, I suppose he will. What shall we do?"

"What will he want to do when he first learns that the baby is blind?"

"I reckon he'll want to have Doctor Dodge see him."

"There is no objection to that. Then what will he do?"

"There isn't anything we can do just now, Cousin Carol. We have had a dreadful time even to live since we were married. And look what a shanty we live in! Not fit for a negro. And Winfield a La Grange! Of course, if the crops are better next year we might be able to take him away to consult some big doctor, but this winter we can't do anything at all."

"I don't know what to do," said Carolina. "You ought to get your husband's consent first."

"Well, what do you want me to do? Does your treatment commence right away?"

"It is already begun."

"Why, how? You haven't done anything that I could see. Do you pray?"

"Not to any virgin or saint, Flower."

"No, I know that Protestants pray to God. Is that what you want me to do?"

"I want you first to have a talk with Winfield and Moultrie--"

"Moultrie will help me!" interrupted Flower. "I'll ask him to talk to Winfield."

"Well, do that. Then if he says you may try it, I want you not to tell another soul, especially don't let Aunt Tempy or any of the negroes know a word about it. I want you to get up about twelve o'clock every night and light your candle, and put it where it shines directly in the baby's eyes. It can't hurt him. Then read the whole of the New Testament,--just as much every night as you can for one hour, believing that everything which was true of Jesus and His disciples then, can be and is true of His disciples on earth to-day, and that, if any one of us could ever be as pure and holy as He was, that we could do the one thing which is denied us yet,--that is, raise the dead! Will you?"

"Indeed, I will."

"Then every night I will treat your baby's eyes by mind-healing, which I will explain to you a little later. In the meantime, you watch very closely to see the first indication which Arthur's eyes give of the light's making him stir, for that will show that his darkness is lifting and that he is beginning to see."

Flower raised herself up and clung to Carolina's knees and buried her face in her dress, weeping bitterly.

"Oh, oh! Don't think I am unhappy. I am crying because I think you can do it. How long will it take?"

"No one can say. It may only take one treatment, or it may take years. 'According to your faith be it unto you.'"

Just then, as Carolina rose to go, the baby wakened, and Flower reached for him and pressed him to her bosom in a passion of grief and hope.

"Look!" she whispered to Carolina, "you can tell from the very expression of his little eyes that he can't see. I remember now that once the sun was shining right into his eyes, and he kept them open, but I didn't notice it at the time."

"Remember this, Flower. We think that he can't see. But in God's eyes he is perfect. With Him there is no blindness nor sickness nor sin nor sorrow. He will take away your grief. He will wipe away all tears from your eyes."

CHAPTER XVI.

A LETTER FROM CAROLINA

"'THE BATH,' ENTERPRISE, S.C.,

"January 27, 19--

"MY DEAR MR. HOWARD:--If only I could drop in on you this evening and make my report in person, what couldn't I tell! You would laugh if you knew why we call our house The Bath. But first, have I ever told you that we have a house? Well, Guildford is so far from even Whitehall, which is the nearest place we visited, that I lost too much time in coming and going. I must have been eight hours in the saddle some days, and I didn't get on fast enough to suit my leaping ambition,--and--bathrooms are scarce in the country, so Cousin Lois and I decided to build a model cabin or quarters before we started the house, and live on the place. There was already a windmill, so I ordered a porcelain tub in Charleston, and built my house around it. Cousin Lois preëmpts it most of the time, but I get my full share, and it is a luxury. Did you ever try going without a bathroom? Try it. It will make you 't'ink ob yo' marcies,' as the negroes say.

"Oh, we are so happy! Every day some of the dear neighbours who knew Guildford in its prime ride or drive over to tell me little forgotten quirks of the blessed place, and to assure me that I am copying it faithfully. Cousin Lois calls it curiosity, but I think it is interest. But the primitive methods in vogue in the South--well, you simply would not believe me unless you saw them. For example, at the turpentine plant at Schoville, which I will tell you more of later, my engineer found them ladling out the crude turpentine by hand, when you know it ought to be piped, and half the time this cheap negro labour, which they hire to save machinery, is drunk or striking, which often shuts down the plant for days at a time,--ten days at Christmas always. Machinery may be expensive, but, at least, it doesn't get drunk, and by means of it a man may run his business, even in the South, regularly, and so build up a reputation for reliability, which, honestly, Mr. Howard, nobody down here seems to know the meaning of, as we understand it! Any excuse serves. Just make your excuse--that's all. It not only seems to relieve the conscience of the purveyor, but satisfies the consumer as well. In Georgia it is a State law not to move freight on Sunday. Imagine that, added to the railroad service as it stands! And in a certain town in Middle Georgia, the fire-engines are drawn by oxen. I enclose the kodak I took of it, for I know you won't believe me else. One thing the South needs more than anything else is some of our Northern Italian labour. Then the negroes will see what it really is to work.

"But I am running away with myself.

"I shall skip all I can, and only tell the essentials.

"After we left Whitehall, nothing would do but we must pay a round of visits among the Lees and La Granges, which we did, staying as short a time as possible with each, partly because I could not properly attend to my work, and partly because of the heart-breaking poverty of all my poor dear relatives. If you could only see their bravery, their pride, and their wholly absurd fury at the bare suggestion that ease and comfort might come to them from admitting Northern capital! I think if they knew that my money comes through you, they would force me to starve with them rather than be indebted to a ---- Yankee. The ladies don't use that word with their lips, but their eyes say it. As it is, they think I am still selling my jewels. And I don't contradict them, simply because there is no use in giving them pain. Their hatred of the North is something which cannot be eradicated in a day. It is a factor in business which blocks the path of every well-wisher of the South, and is an entity to be reckoned with just as palpably as credit. The man who ignores it makes a mistake which sooner or later will bring him up with a jerk. I dwell upon this, because, if we form the syndicate which you propose, it must be managed craftily, and I know you will not disregard my warning.

"As an example of it, let me tell what has befallen the plant for making wood turpentine at Schoville, Georgia. It is a fine, modern, up-to-date plant of the steam process, backed and controlled by Judd Brothers & Morgan, of Brooklyn. Their representative approached my counsel, offering to sell. The Brooklyn firm own fifty-one per cent. of the stock, and the rest is taken by citizens of Schoville. I sent my man, Donohue, down to investigate the process, intending, if I didn't buy, to organize a similar company and operate under their patents, as I find theirs, if not the best, is at least a satisfactory process, and turns out a pure water-white turpentine with a specific gravity of 31.70. And Donohue asserts that by the use of steam he can eliminate the objectionable odour. He has been in the employ of both the Schoville and the Lightning companies and is a valuable man, though not strictly honest. Donohue was satisfied that there was something wrong at Schoville, and advised me to hold off. He reported the plant out of repair, although the books showed money in plenty supplied by the owners. Donohue then visited the plant at Lightning, Georgia, and found everything all right. It has since transpired that the foreman of the plant at Schoville, a cracker named Leakin, had deliberately shipped crude turpentine, which of course was of rank odour and off colour, to the factors at Savannah, who shipped it to Germany and South America without giving it a very careful examination. As is usual with these men, they were too slack to make the thorough examination before making shipment which the law requires, and paid over an advance of thirty-five cents a gallon to Leakin like innocent little lambs. Of course, the inevitable occurred. Buenos Ayres and Berlin not only refused to pay, but returned the consignment, and the Savannah factors now refuse to touch wood turpentine at any price.

"It seems that, when the Northern owners sent their representative down to investigate, Leakin frankly told him that he did not intend to make money for any ---- Yankees. They thereupon swore out a warrant for his arrest, but he wrecked the plant at night and was hurried out of town by his relatives.

"Now, so far from discouraging me, this serves my purpose well. For with sixty per cent. profit on the manufacture of wood turpentine on paper (as per my previous reports), which cuts to between forty and fifty in actual operation, it is one of the future industries of the South. Of course the little plant I propose to build at Guildford or near by will only be a mouthful. I figure that between ten and twelve millions of dollars would corner the turpentine market, and then put the price of orchard turpentine so high that it would practically be off the market. Then we could force the consumers to take wood turpentine in its place, and in this way show them that it will do the same work and bring the same results as the regular orchard turpentine. They are afraid of it now, so they must be reduced by compulsion to giving it a fair trial. I bought ten barrels of wood turpentine made by the company at Lightning, and sent a small sample to every paint and varnish manufacturer in the United States, with a letter giving them the chemical analysis and asking the recipient to give it a fair trial. About one-third replied that it seemed satisfactory, and sent me orders for from five to ten barrels for a trial, but they want it at about ten cents per gallon less than the orchard. It seems that no one will pay within ten cents of the regular market price. I turned these orders over to the Lightning company on a commission, and am making quite a neat little sum out of it, though I never thought of that end of the proposition when I sent out the samples. I tried the experiment to see what sort of a market I could look for. There is no reason why this wood turpentine should not be shipped and sold as regular turpentine, and one good strong corner on the market will bring this about.

"To continue my investigations, I want you to organize a small company, giving me control. I shall erect a twenty-cord plant between Enterprise and Guildford, within wagon distance of the wood-supply of the estate. Recollect that this process uses only the fallen trees and stumps of the long-leafed pine, which are reduced to a sawdust, and this is then put into the retorts. Steam is then injected, which tries out the turpentine, which is then run into the refining still.

"I can arouse no interest whatever among my relatives. They simply think I am crazy. I even suggested to my uncle, Judge Fanshaw Lee, of Charleston, the simple proposition of joining me in the purchase of a stump-puller to clear his land for rice and cotton, but he wouldn't do it, and continues to plant in fields dotted with old stumps. But he will rent it from me if I buy one! So please order immediately the most improved sort, and consign it to me at Enterprise, S.C.

"Even though I am a Southerner by blood, and anxious to improve the country in general, and my relatives in particular, I work under inconceivable difficulties. I sent my lawyer to one of the biggest factors in Savannah, by the name of James Oldfield, to suggest a combine to corner turpentine, offering to raise nine million dollars, if he and his friends would raise one million. Legare reported that 'Oldfield's head hit the ceiling' at the mere suggestion. But, upon being drawn out, Oldfield admitted that twenty years ago he had entertained a similar idea, although, of course, at that time not for the purpose of introducing wood turpentine. But his ideas were on too narrow-gauge a plan to admit the suggestion now. So we shall simply be obliged to do it without him.

"It seems to me that, with the South in the mental attitude it now holds, it will need some radical means, such as a turpentine corner, to force Southern landowners to reinvest money in their own property. Many a man is land poor with thousands of dollars' worth of stumps and fallen trees on his land which are suitable for wood turpentine. In order to supply the demand, the orchard people are obliged each year to find two million acres of virgin forest for their operations. After bleeding these for three years, the lumber men then enter and cut the timber, thus leaving millions of fallen trees and stumps, all of which are suitable for our process. Now, it would take years to educate these landowners in the process of extracting turpentine from this stumpage, while a corner in orchard turpentine would, in three months, turn the attention of half the chemists and inventors in the United States toward bettering present processes and discovering new ones. Every newspaper in the land would give this New Southern Industry millions of dollars' worth of free advertising, and inside of ten years the whole South would blossom as a rose.

"I have hinted at this before, but have not explained it because the time was not ripe. Now, after six months of untiring investigation by trustworthy agents, and after bitter personal experience, I find that no help whatsoever can be expected from the South. Rather they will fight us at every step, like children compelled to take medicine. Did you ever see a health officer try to vaccinate a negro settlement on the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic?

"You understand me, do you not? Tell me if I make my point sufficiently clear. I propose to corner turpentine, not for the purpose of raising the price, but to take the orchard stuff completely off the market until we have forced the public to give wood turpentine a trial. It has been demonstrated in every department that the patented product will do the work of the orchard, not only just as well, but in some cases, as that of paint, it actually holds the colour better.

"If you are still interested, let me know and I will explain my developed plan. Meanwhile I welcome suggestions from you, or any of your interested parties.

"With devoted love to all in your dear house, I am,

Always affectionately yours,

"CAROLINA LEE."

CHAPTER XVII.

IN THE BARNWELLS' CARRYALL

Aunt Angie La Grange descended from the Barnwells' carryall in front of the station platform at Enterprise, and tapped on the window of the telegraph-agent's box.

"How late is the train from Savannah, Barney, son?"

Mr. Mazyck sauntered out.

"Only about three hours to-day, Aunt Angie. Expecting the folks?"

"Only Peachie. Mrs. Winchester and Carolina went on down to Jacksonville on business. Did you ever see such a girl?"

"I never did. She scares me 'most to death. I'd like to marry her, Aunt Angie, but what could I--what could any man do with such a wife?"

"She'd make any man rich. Moultrie says she goes so far ahead of him in her ideas of business, he can't even keep her in sight."

"Oh, any man has got to make up his mind to take her dust!" laughed Barnwell.

"Are you in earnest about marrying her, Barney?"

"Of cou'se I am! Aren't all the boys? Isn't Moultrie?"

A shade darkened Aunt Angie's face.

"You know, son, that Moultrie will never marry unless--"

"Exactly! Unless! Well, there's a heap of unlesses which may he'p him to change his mind. And maybe Miss Carolina is one of them."

"I'd be proud to have him win her, but, as you say, all the boys are in love with her, here and in Charleston, and now she has been to Savannah, I suppose they will follow suit, and--"

"Poor Jacksonville!" sighed Barnwell.

Mrs. La Grange laughed.

"We haven't had such a belle in South Carolina in many years," she said. "Before the war--" and she sighed.

Barney laughed unfeelingly, and Mrs. La Grange continued:

"How about Araby, son? Are you going to sell her to Carolina?"

"Indeed I am not, Aunt Angie. I'd give her to Miss Carolina before I'd sell her to anybody else; but, to tell you the truth, I'd about die if I had to part with that mare! She's human. Sound as a dollar and not a trick of any kind. That nigger horse-trainer is a magician with animals. I'm blest if I don't believe he'll teach Araby to talk before he quits. And she whinnies if she even passes him in a crowd."

"Carolina wants her worse than anything in the world."

"Well, she can just go awn wantin'," said the usually gallant Mr. Mazyck, ungallantly. "If I'd give Araby to her, I'd lose both my mare and my sweetheart."

"Somehow or other I can't help thinking that Carolina will get that horse in spite of you. Barney, do go and see what time it is! This is the third time I've been down here to wait for this mean train!"

"Yonder she comes now. Only three hours and fifteen minutes late. That's not so bad, Aunt Angie. When she tries, she can tardy herself up a heap mo' than that!"

Mrs. La Grange anxiously scanned the shabby coaches for a sight of her daughter's blooming face. Peachie jumped from the car steps and ran to her mother's arms. They kissed each other like two lovers who had been parted for years.

"Have you had a pleasant week, darling baby?" asked her mother.

Peachie's pink cheeks paled and her face clouded over.

"No, I haven't," she whispered, hurriedly, "but I don't want anybody but you to know. Don't let Barney ask me. Let's hurry."

Mrs. La Grange led the way to the borrowed carriage with a sinking heart. Aside from two visits to her aunt in Charleston, this was the only time Peachie had ever been away from home. And now to have this invitation to visit Savannah, given the year before and anticipated all this time, turn into the failure which Peachie's face indicated, was almost as great a disappointment to Mrs. La Grange as to the girl herself.

In the carriage, where Old Moses could not hear them, the mother anxiously awaited the story.

"Begin at the beginning and don't skip a word. We've two good hours before us with nobody to interrupt."

"Well, you know how happy Carolina was at the prospect of taking me to a fine hotel like the De Soto, and how lovely my clothes were, and how pleased Cousin Lois was at the prospect of seeing her old friends there? Well, people called, of course,--none of the girls, though,--and Mrs. General Giddings, who is the leader of Savannah society, at once asked Cousin Lois to be a chaperon at the Valentine Ball. John Hobson invited me, and Jim Little asked Carolina, and, do you know, it was the first time in all her life that Carolina had ever been to a ball with a man! She says she always went with a chaperon and met her partners at the dance. And she wanted to do that in Savannah, but Mrs. Giddings assured her that it was all right, and so she did.

"Oh, mother, I wish you could have seen us that night! You know how I looked, but Cousin Lois wore a black satin brocade, studded with real turquoises and blue ostrich feathers woven into the goods. And, with all her size, she looked perfectly lovely. Carolina wore a white Paris muslin over white silk, with every flounce trimmed with real lace. Her hair looked as if she only had one pin in it, it was so loose and fluffy and--well, artistic is the only word to describe her. She looked like a fairy princess. It began in the dressing-room."

"What began?

"Well--Savannah began!" cried Peachie. "I never heard of such things happening to our girls when they go to Atlanta and Columbus and Augusta and Macon, while as for Charleston!--well, I needn't defend Charleston manners to you, mother!

"Not a soul spoke to us, although everybody knew we were strangers and everybody knew who we were, for of course it was in the papers,--such distinguished arrivals as Mrs. Rhett Winchester and Carolina Lee! But not a girl came near. They hollered and joked among themselves, and somebody would whisper to two or three, then the whole roomful would scream like wild Indians, and once one of the boys came to the door and called to them to hurry up, and one girl screamed back, 'Shut yo' big mouth!' and the rest fairly yelled with approval.

"Then one girl was just going out with her bodice all gaping open, and Carolina stepped up to her as sweetly as if she had been received with perfect politeness and asked if she mightn't fasten it. The hooks were half off, so Carolina took a paper of pins and fairly pinned that girl into her clothes,--her waist and skirt didn't meet. She accepted all this help, thanked her, and went out, leaving us all alone. Then our boys came and took us down to the ballroom, and, if you will believe it, mother, not a girl came near us or asked to be introduced or introduced a single boy! Not even the girl that Carolina had helped. I looked at Carolina to see if she noticed it, but her face was as calm as it always is. Her colour, however, was a little less than usual at first.

"We noticed that things sort of dragged at first, and soon we found out what it was. An English yacht was in the river, and its owner, Sir Hubert Wemyss, a young man only about thirty, was expected, and all the girls were trying to save dances for him, and all the boys were trying to get the choice ones.

"The first dance I didn't watch Carolina, because I had heard that Jim Little was a good dancer, but, after it was over, I saw him take her to the door and she went up to the dressing-room. I made John stop near him, and I asked him what was the matter. 'Oh, I stuck my foot through the lace of her dress, and she's gone to be sewed up. Say, Miss Peachie, that girl can't dance! I never saw a Yankee that could!'

"Well, mother, I could scarcely believe my ears! The conceit of that raw Southern boy, who never had been outside of his own little town in the whole of his life, except to go duck-shooting in the swamps, to presume to criticize Carolina's dancing!"

"What did you say to him, sweetheart?"

Aunt Angie's cheeks were as red as any girl's. She sat bolt upright in the borrowed carriage, in her cheap print dress and cotton gloves, looking like an empress. The proudest blood in South Carolina flowed in her veins and she had the spirit of her State.

"I said, 'Are you sure, Mr. Little, that the fault was all hers?' And he laughed and said, 'Well, the Savannah girls never find fault with my dancing, Miss Peachie!' 'Oh,' I said, 'if such criterions have stamped their approval on you, Mr. Little, of course there is no more to be said!' He didn't see the sarcasm at all,--he seems a trifle dense. So we waited for Carolina, and when she came back, I saw that her dress was ruined, but she had managed to hide it pretty well, and her manner was just as sweet to that man as if he had been fanning her, and we all four went back to Cousin Lois.

"The next dance we changed partners, Jim Little taking me and John Hobson taking Carolina. Now John is said to be the best dancer in Savannah, so I kept an eye on them, but they didn't do very well. Carolina's colour began to rise and her eyes began to grow that purplish black--you remember? Oh, she looked so beautiful! But she wasn't enjoying herself, and she stopped near me to rest. Then I heard John say, 'You dance more like a Southern girl than any Yankee I ever knew!' Think, mother! That was twice she had been called a Yankee before we had been there an hour. A Lee of South Carolina! Her cheeks just grew a little warmer and she lifted her chin a little higher, but didn't correct him--just said, 'I suppose you intend that for a compliment, Mr. Hobson?' 'I should say I did!' he said. 'I never saw a Yankee girl who could dance in all my born days!' 'How do you account for that?' asked Carolina, in just as sweet a tone, mother, as she always uses. Me? I was just boiling! I was ready to cry!"

Her mother pressed her hand. Aunt Angle's own lips were trembling with indignation.

"'Oh,' the fool said, 'I reckon they don't get as many chances to dance as our girls do!' Well, that saved me. I began to laugh and I laughed until I nearly went into hysterics. I had to excuse myself and ask Jim to get me some water!"

"Did Carolina laugh, too?" asked Mrs. La Grange.

"Well, she smiled, and I knew from that, that she was only holding herself in.

"The next was a Lancers. Carolina danced with Rube Bryan. He is very tall and from the first he tried to get fresh with Carolina. I was in the same set dancing with John again. And I want to say right here that I never saw such unladylike and ungentlemanly dancing in all my life. Why, in Charleston the chaperons would have requested the whole dance to be stopped. They wouldn't have permitted such hootings and yellings, such jumps and shouts. Girls yelled at each other across the whole hall--just like negroes. 'Go it, Virgie!' 'Shake a foot, Nell!' In the ladies' chain the boys jerked the girls so that one girl in our set was thrown down and her wrist sprained."

"I was getting frightened and I could see that Carolina was on the verge of leaving the set. Then she seemed to brace herself, for Mrs. Winchester had left the line of chaperons and was making her way down to where we were dancing. And mother, there was rage in her whole bearing. She just looked as if Carolina were being insulted by dancing with such rowdies. But Carolina gave her a look and she did not interfere. She stood there, however."

"Did anything happen, Peachie?" asked Mrs. La Grange, unable to wait for the sequel.

"Yes, mother, it did. I believe those girls had dared him to, because he waited until the very last, then he lifted Carolina off her feet clear up into the air, and landed her in front of Mrs. Winchester with a deep bow. Everybody laughed and screamed for a minute, then something in the attitude of both Mrs. Winchester and Carolina made them hush. Cousin Lois's voice was low, but you could hear it all over the room.

"'Young man,' she said, 'your name is unknown to me, but let me say to you that you are not a gentleman!'

"What happened then?" cried Mrs. La Grange.

"Mrs. Giddings, of course. She always says the cutting thing. 'You are perfectly right, Lois,' she said, 'the man is a nobody. We expect such manners from nobodies. Not that the somebodies are any better, if this dance is a sample. This is my first appearance. Rest assured that it will be my last. We Giddings don't chaperon barn dances!'

"That, from Mrs. Giddings, seemed to sober them. They all moved away leaving Rube Bryan bowing and scraping and trying to square himself. Cousin Lois simply waved him aside as if he were a piccaninny. She asked Carolina if she wanted to go home. Carolina hesitated a minute, then she lifted that chin of hers and said, 'No; a Lee cannot be driven from a ballroom by rudeness. Just let me go and put on my truth!"

"Bless the child!" cried Mrs. La Grange, who was as excited as a spectator at his first horse-race. "Bless her! There is pride! There is what the French call 'race'! And to see the dear putting on the armour of her religion even in a ballroom!"

"Mother, Carolina's religion helps her in everything. Why, she just stepped out of sight behind a row of palms. She went to a window and reached up one arm and leaned her head against it. With the other hand she drew back the curtain and looked up at the stars. I put my arm around her and she said, in a low, distinct voice. 'The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.' 'And mother, it made the tears come to my eyes. To think of my beautiful Carolina, with nothing but love in her heart for the whole South, to come home to us and be treated so rudely that she had to appeal to God to help her to get through something which ought to have been only a pleasure to her!"

"I know, my dear baby," said her mother, whose own eyes were suspiciously bright, "but I rather imagine that to a girl who has seen the best society that Europe and America have to offer, a dance with a lot of Savannah boys and girls could not be considered in the light of much of a treat."

"I know it, mother. Yet Cousin Carol's manners are so perfect that she never lets you suspect that. She enters into everything with such love."

"That is her religion," said Mrs. La Grange.

"Oh, that reminds me. She went on talking aloud as we stood there. She said, 'I must remember that the vesture of truth is my raiment. I must stand sentinel at the door of my thought and not allow error to enter it. And the way to keep error out, is to pour love in. Love! Love! Love! That is the way to meet them. Father--mother--God! Help me to love mine enemies!' Oh, and mother dearest, by that time I was weeping, but Carol's eyes were quite dry. 'Don't cry, little girl,' she said, 'I don't any more, for I have got beyond the belief that religion is an emotion. It is too real--too lasting. Emotions die out.' And a little light seemed to dawn for me--just as I have seen clouds break on a dark night and a single star shine through."

"Then did you go back?" asked her mother, after a pressure of the hand to show that she understood. There was a singular bond between these two.

"Yes, she turned and pressed my hand just as you did then, with such understanding, and her face was fairly shining, but with such a different radiance. 'Come, Peachie, darling! faithful little comrade. You would not have been one of the disciples who slept and left their Master to pray alone, would you? Well, I have conquered my little moment of error. Now let's go back.' 'And show them how South Carolina faces her foes,' I said. 'Wouldn't it be better to go back and show them how South Carolina can forgive?' she asked."

"Bless her heart!" murmured Mrs. La Grange. "I know how a young girl feels to be mistreated at a ball."

"Yes, but wait. The grandest, glorious-est thing happened. Just as we came from behind the palms who should be bowing to the chaperons but the handsomest man I ever saw in my life. Tall, dark, distinguished-looking, with one white lock of hair and all the rest black as a coal. He has a slight limp from a wound at Magersfontein, but it only distinguished him the more and doesn't interfere with his dancing a bit. Well, when he saw Carolina, his face lighted up and he said, 'Oh, Miss Lee, how awfully jolly to see you again! To tell the truth, I had half a mind not to come, after all I had promised, and I wanted to get out of it the worst way until I heard that you were to be here. Then I couldn't get here fast enough.' Well, mother, even if every girl there hadn't suddenly found that side of the room strangely attractive, his voice has a carrying tone, and--well, I wish you could have seen those girls. They looked as though they had been slapped in the face."

"As they deserved!" said Mrs. La Grange, grimly.

"Then the band struck up a two-step and he turned to Mrs. Winchester and asked her if she would save her first square dance for him, but she said she wasn't dancing. So then he asked Carolina. She gave me a little look which meant that I could have him next, and then! Well, I've seen dancing all my life, but I never saw anybody dance as those two did. It was like the flight of swallows. So graceful, so dignified, so distinguished, and yet so spirited. Carolina dances like a breeze."

"I can imagine just how she dances," cried Mrs. La Grange, excitedly. "Go on, child!"

"Well, the funniest sight of all was Cousin Lois. She drew her chin in and waved her fan and puffed herself out for all the world like our turkey-hen. I could have laughed."

"I know just how she felt--just how I should have felt in her place if you had been treated as Carolina was. Then did he dance with you?"

"Yes, then he danced with me. Then with Carolina again. Then she said to him, 'Now, Sir Hubert, I want you to meet some of these pretty girls, but as I don't know them myself, I shall ask Mr. Little to take you around and introduce you to the brightest of them, so that you will take away with you the best impression of our Southern girls.'"

"Oh, Peachie! I couldn't have done that!"

"Nor I either, mother. I just couldn't. So Jim started to take him, but he said, 'Just wait a moment.' Then he came to me and took--"

"I hope he took more than one!" cried Mrs. La Grange, jealously.

"He took seven, mother. And in the German he favoured me until--"

"That was too many, Peachie. You ought not--"

"I know, dearest honey mother. I ought not to do heaps of things I do do, but after all, what do I care what those people think of me? All they can say is that I flirted with him--"

"Or that he flirted with you," laughed her mother.

"Oh, yes, they will say that, never fear. And yet--"

"And yet what, my darling? Here we are at home."

"And yet he took Cousin Lois and Carolina to Jacksonville on his yacht, and he asked me to go, but I said I had to get back to you, and he was with us all the rest of the time we were there--"

Her mother turned and looked at her.

"And he is coming to see me on his way back."

As Mrs. La Grange stepped from the carriage with the air of a queen descending from her chariot, she put her arm around her daughter's waist and said:

"I think I have to be proud of a dear, generous little girl whose loyalty caused an otherwise pleasant week to be spoiled."

Peachie's cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled.

"It wasn't quite spoiled, mother dear. Oh, honey, he is the handsomest man and the best dancer! Just wait till you see him!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

A LETTER FROM KATE

"NEW YORK.

"DEAREST CAROLINA:--Great news! Three pieces of it. First, I have turned Christian Scientist! Second, Rosemary Goddard is married to the Honourable Lionel Spencer! Third, daddy is so tickled over all that you have done, as you may have suspected from his letters lately, that he is going down. He will take the car, and Noel and Mrs. Goddard, mother, and I are coming, too! Don't bother about accommodations. We will switch the car to a siding and live in it. We may all have to go to Charleston and Jacksonville, so that you and Peachie and a handy man or two had better get ready for a rip-roaring old time, for we are going to make Rome howl. Noel wants to go to Ormond for the automobile races. He has entered his machine. I named it for him,--'The White Moth,'--don't you think that's a dandy name?

"Now to go back to the really important thing. I've wanted to be a Scientist ever since I found out that it wasn't a drag-net to catch all the cranks in the world, as I at first supposed. I found that out in two ways. One, by knowing a lot of you who were not in the least cranks. The other, by seeing what a lot of cranks there are left! Yet all the time I was hating myself and struggling against the compelling influence. Did you ever drag a cat across the carpet by the tail? Well, that is just about the easy, gliding gait I used to reach Christian Science!

"Still, you'll never guess who influenced me most. Not you nor that heavenly Mrs. Goddard nor the wonderful cures I've seen. Nuh! Guess again. Old Noel! Yes, sir. Old skeptical Noel! Brought up for a Catholic, too. Wouldn't that freeze you? Well, think si to myself, think si, 'if old Noel can see good in it, and he's the best all-round sport, man of the world, and gentleman I know, it's time little Katie got aboard.' So I just climbed on the raft without saying a word to anybody, expecting everybody to raise Cain, but, to my astonishment, daddy was as pleased as Punch, and he and mother go to church with me every Sunday. What do you say to that?

"At the ball the Goddards gave for Rosemary just before she sailed, I was doing a two-step with Noel, and I saw a dandy girl, whose gown simply reeked of Paris, it was so delicious. She was dancing with a corking looking man, and, as we stopped near them for me to get a better look at her clothes, I heard her say, 'Are you going to communion at the Mother Church?' and he said, 'I never miss it. It is the treat of my whole year!' I looked at Noel and he looked at me.

"'Noel,' I said, 'Did I hear aright? They weren't betting on a horse-race in cipher, were they?' 'No,' sez he, giggling, 'they were not. They are Christian Scientists, and they are now talking about an incorporeal God.' 'In a ballroom,' murmurs I to myself. 'Noel,' I said, in a weak voice, 'Take me out and lay me softly under a pump and bring me to. I am too young to go dotty without any warning.' But, instead of that, we joined them and Noel introduced us to each other, and we finished the two-step talking about how hard it was to change from our old idea of a God who was so much like a man that we had to flag Him and shout out our prayers to be sure to get His attention. I used to feel as if I were on the floor of a convention, trying to catch the Speaker's eye.

"But I want to ask you two things that I can't quite get up my nerve to ask Mrs. Goddard. What did you do about praying while changing your idea of a personal, corporeal God to one of spirit? Why, Carolina, I've lost the combination! I feel as though I were praying through a megaphone out of an open window. My prayers don't seem to strike against anything. Will I get over this feeling in time? It is only fair to state, however, that even this queer hit-or-miss method brings answers which my most frantic screams for help and my most humble and dependent clinging to the robe of my personal God never did. So you can just bet that I'm going to stick to the new method, whether I ever understand it or not, because it does deliver the goods. Am I right or wrong? I want to know.

"Now, I did tackle Mrs. Goddard on this point. I feel a perfect wretch to mention it, but the fact is, I simply cannot endure the name of Mrs. Eddy! Every time they mention 'Science and Health' in church, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' Every time they give out a hymn that she wrote, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' And every time they do it, my blood boils and my face burns and I grab my hymn-book until--well, I split a pair of gloves nearly every Sunday!

"The conceit of that woman! Suppose she has given the world a new religion,--why not let us show our gratitude spontaneously. Why need she say such conceited, sacrilegious things in her book? She throws hot air at herself indirectly in every chapter. It reminds me of a page in Roosevelt's 'Alone in Cubia.' I counted sixty-three I's on one page in that book, until I felt like the little boy who said to his father, after an evening of war experiences, 'Papa, couldn't you get any one to help you put down the rebellion?'

"I don't believe, unless my feeling changes, that I shall ever join the church while its by-laws remain as they are. I will work for the cause, and be diligent and faithful and studious, but I disapprove of a church being such a close corporation and for one finite, human being to possess such power as Mrs. Eddy holds, and holds with such pertinacity and deliberate love of power.

"When I said some of this to Mrs. Goddard, she said that she never chemicalized over Mrs. Eddy the way great numbers did, but she said you had a claim at one time, and I want to know if you are over it. I feel like a brute to have to admit it even to you, for of course I am grateful and appreciative and all that. But if you call what I feel 'chemicalizing,' I can only say that I can hear myself sizzling like a bottle of Apollinaris whenever I come across the name of Eddy, and realize how she holds the power of a female Pope.

"I told Noel about it, but he doesn't feel it at all. Never did. But he understands how intensely I suffer from it, and he said if I didn't mind my eye, I'd blow off a tire right in church. And once, when he took me and saw me getting red in the face, he said, 'Now sit tight, old girl!' and I nearly laughed aloud.

"Now let me tell you my first demonstration. I am so happy over it I am going to do something to celebrate it, and that's another thing I want to consult you about.

"Yesterday Noel and I were out in the White Moth, and every time I know I am going out in the thing I read in 'Science and Health' about accidents, and declare the truth, so that my mind will be filled with a preventive. It comforts me a great deal and is the only thing that enables me to enjoy an automobile ride in New York, for, with the danger of blowing up and other people's bad driving and frightened horses and the absolute recklessness of pedestrians, you take, if not your life, at least your enjoyment of life, in your hand whenever you get into a machine.

"Noel is the most careful chauffeur I ever saw, and we were just trundling along out in the Bronx, when, without a word of warning, a little bit of a boy jumped from a crowd of children and stumbled right in front of us. I saw him fall, and to my dying day I never shall forget the sight of his little white, upturned face as he disappeared under the machine. We ran right squarely over him!

"I stood up and screamed out: 'You said accidents could not happen! You promised! You promised! We have not hurt that baby! He is alive! He is not hurt! He is not even run over!' And by that time we had both jumped down and run back, and a big crowd was gathering. Talk about treating audibly! I was screeching at the top of my voice. Yet still there lay the child apparently dead. I picked him up in my arms and sat down in the mud with him, still, as Noel declares, talking aloud. Oh, Carolina, I never shall forget the sight of his little hands! So dirty, but so little! And his little limp body,--I feel as if I had it in my lap still. The crowd kept getting bigger, and some policemen came, and suddenly, with a scream I never can forget even in my dreams, the child's mother rushed up. She raised her fist to strike me in the face, and I thought I was done for, when suddenly the child's eyes opened, and something made me say: 'Here is your baby, little woman. He is not hurt at all!' She fairly snatched him from me and began to feel him all over, but she could find no broken bones. She was crying and laughing and kissing him, and I still kept telling her that he was unhurt. Just then the police got through with Noel, and he insisted on putting mother and child and a policeman in the tonneau and taking them to the nearest hospital to have the child examined. We did so, and, if you will believe it, there wasn't a scratch on him. He either fainted from fright or we stunned him, the doctor said.

"Two of the surgeons came out and examined the machine, and they found that there is only a foot of space between the lowest part of the car and the ground.

"'It is the most miraculous escape I ever saw,' said one of them, 'to run over a five-year-old boy and not even scratch him. To make the story quite complete you ought to claim to be Christian Scientists. That is the sort of game they always play on a credulous public.'

"'We are both Christian Scientists,' said Noel, in his most polite manner, 'and I am deeply impressed with your involuntary tribute to its efficacy in case of accident.'

"Between you and me, I don't believe that doctor got his mouth together again without help.

"Well, we had the greatest time when we got back. First, we took every child on the scene--and I believe there must have been a hundred--to an ice-cream saloon and treated them. And while they were waiting their turns, Noel filled the White Moth with them and gave them a ride. I never had so much fun in my life. I went home with the mother, with a quart of ice-cream in each hand, and got her to tell me the story of her life. Poor soul! She has nine children, but she loves each one as if it were her all. Noel and I are both going to do something for that child. His name is Dewey Dolan.

"When it was all over, and we were sneaking along back streets to get home without being seen, for we were both sights, and the Moth will have to be done over, I began to think of the way I had acted, and I have made Noel promise never to take me out again unless I have my Amityville tag on, so that, if I go crazy out loud again, they will know where I have escaped from.

"But Noel, dear old thing, confessed that he was declaring the truth no less, only in a quieter way, and we both firmly believe that our little knowledge of Science and our understanding, incomplete though it is, are what turned that calamity into a blessing, for a blessing I am determined to crown it.

"What do you think of my idea? You know how I have always been carried away over children,--how their sufferings and deaths have almost turned me into an infidel,--how the carelessness of parents and nurses has almost driven me insane,--well, if they can be protected by Christian Science thought and healed by mind, why not hasten the day by establishing a Christian Science kindergarten, and, if it succeeds, by a series of them? There must be plenty of kindergartners among Scientists who would welcome a combination of their work, and in the crowded tenement districts it would be a boon. But, oh, how carefully we must go, for the poor will only allow themselves to be helped in their own blind way. Tell me if you think there is any hope for the philanthropic end of it. I am going to open one for the children of ready-made Scientists in my own house,--you know I studied kindergartning, and I have ten already promised. I shall have no trouble about assistants for my Fifth Avenue school. But the other place is the one my heart is in. Tell me what you think of that.

"Rosemary is coming back here to live. Her husband is a Christian Scientist, and has gone into business in New York, so I know she will help me, but, oh, Carolina, you will never know how I miss you! New York is not the same place since you left it. You have such a way of dominating every spot you are in by your own personality. Does this hot air sound natural from Kate Howard?

"I am crazy--fairly daffy--over your success in the turpentine, and daddy goes around swelling out his chest and strutting like a turkey gobbler. Why, Carolina, do you realize that you will not only make yourself rich and anybody you choose to let into the game, but that you will be opening up by force, so to speak, with your Educational Turpentine Corner, an industry which will revolutionize the entire turpentine pine country? It is a big project, my dear, to have emanated from the brain of a woman. But, oh, won't the papers fairly eat you raw!

"I will attend to all the commissions you sent and bring the stuff down in the car. A good many of us want newer and finer editions of 'Science and Health,' and, if you utterly refuse to make presents of them for the good of the cause, we will sell our old books at whatever you think your friends can afford to pay. I agree with you that it is better to make them pay something for them.

"Rawlins, our butler, and two of the footmen go regularly to the Christian Science church, and Rawlins has been healed of intemperance through Mrs. Goddard's butler. Perkins says he owes his conversion to the day Gladys Yancey walked across the floor for Noel's doll. So you see we all had a hand in the work you started, and a little leaven is leavening the whole lump.

"Oh, Carolina, you know how discontented and fractious I used to be? Well, it is all gone,--all the fear, the dread of the unknown, the unhappiness, and the temper, and I am happy for the first time in my life!

"But now good-bye, my dearest friend. I am bringing some dandy glad rags with which to astonish the natives. Tell Peachie that I go to every sale I hear of, and that I am bringing her and Flower some of the dearest little inexpensive remnants they ever saw. Bless those girls! It sorta makes my old heart ache to think they haven't the clothes they need to set off their good looks.

"Again good-bye. Best love to Cousin Lois and yourself from all of us. And I am as ever your slave. KATE."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FEAR

Carolina had not been a week among her kinsmen before they began to warn her of the terror of the South. They definitely forbade her ever riding alone, except in broad daylight along the public highway, and even then some white man of her acquaintance generally made it his business to be called in whatever direction she happened to be going.

All this Carolina saw and felt and appreciated, but with the natural fearlessness of her character and the total want of comprehension which women seem to feel who have never come into contact with this universal dread of all Southern States, Carolina often forgot her warnings, and tempted opportunity by striking off the highway into the pine woods to inspect her turpentine camps.

Once Moultrie La Grange found her unaccompanied by any white man, talking to a burly negro in a camp, and when he had taken her away and they had gained the road where she could see distinctly, she found him white and shaking. Knowing his physical courage, this exhibition of fear startled her, and for a few weeks she was more cautious.

Then one afternoon she mounted Scintilla and rode into Enterprise for the mail. She received the letter from Kate which has just been quoted and read it as she rode along. It contained so much food for thought that Carolina forgot everything else, until, looking up, she found that she was just opposite the new terrapin crawl she was having prepared under Moultrie's direction. Without thinking, she struck into the woods and threaded her way among the giant pine-trees toward the coast.

It was virgin forest and on her own land, a tract she intended leasing to some orchard turpentine factors in Jacksonville. It was twilight in the forest, but Carolina rode forward fearlessly, glancing sharply at the trees for signs of their having been boxed by thieving negroes.

Suddenly she saw a boxed tree, and, springing down, she drew Scintilla's bridle over her arm and stooped to examine the suspected tree. As she was bending down, Scintilla jerked her head, and the bridle slipped from Carolina's arm. She sprang to her feet, but, with a nicker of delight, the handsome horse kicked up her heels and pranced away from her, looking for all the world like a child ready for a romp.

So free from fear she was that Carolina laughed aloud, but the laugh froze on her lips, for, without turning her head, she could see, crouching down and creeping toward her, the huge form of a negro man, whose half-open mouth and half-closed eyes, as he stole noiselessly closer and closer, instantly told her of her dire peril.

The girl's whole body became rigid with terror,--a terror so intense and so unspeakable that she realized how it was that women can go mad from the effect of it. In a moment, every warning, every hint, every word that she had heard on the subject flashed through her brain with lightning quickness. An intense silence reigned in the forest, broken only by Scintilla's cropping a stray tuft of spring grass and the footsteps of the black creeping nearer to his white prey.

Carolina never thought of screaming. No white man was within a mile of her. Oh, for Moultrie,--Moultrie, who had saved her once before! A sick feeling came over her--things began to swim before her eyes--she swayed--and at the sight of her weakness the negro stood upright.

He was no longer a crawling horror. He was a man, and her God was at hand!

The girl smote her hands together. "His truth shall be thy shield!" "God is my all!" "He is my rock and my fortress!" "Thou shalt call upon me and I will answer!" "Fear not, for I am with thee!" Detached sentences, phrases, half-sentences fell from her lips in frozen whispers. But the man stood still. He was no longer crawling toward her. And they stood looking at each other. He had queer eyes,--one blue and one black--where had she heard of such eyes--where had she seen this very man?

"'Polyte!" she cried.

Instantly the white woman got the ascendency over the black blood of the man.

"'Polyte, do you know who you are? You are the son of my father's nurse! Your mother was my father's black mammy!"

The assurance, even the confidence, left the man's manner. His shoulders drooped perceptibly. He took a backward step. Surely she did not know what he was or she would not speak to him except to scream for help.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yas, missis."

"You don't know how you frightened me, until I saw who you were. Then I knew that you would catch Scintilla for me. Mr. Moultrie has told me what a way you have with animals."

In an instant the man was her servant, the son of her grandfather's slave. His fear of detection and punishment left him, and he was quick enough to know that her supposed ignorance of his intentions had saved him from a horrible death. He was a bad negro partly because he was so intelligent.

"I'll git her for you. Jes' watch me!"

He turned eagerly toward the horse and snapped his fingers. Scintilla raised her head and began to step gingerly toward the man. 'Polyte's power over animals may have been hypnotism, but to Carolina it was like magic to see Scintilla's bridle in 'Polyte's hand. The man proudly led the mare to her.

"Help me to mount," said Carolina, her shaking knees threatening every minute to give way beneath her. "No, hold your hand, and when I put my foot in it, you lift me. There!"

Once on her horse's back, Carolina felt her heart begin to beat with less noise. It seemed as if he could see how it pounded against her side.

"'Polyte," she said, "you are what people call a bad man. You have been bleeding my trees, and I don't know what all. Why don't you behave?"

The man kicked at a tuft of moss.

"Nobody won't hire me, Miss Calline. Ise done been in de chain-gang too often. Nobody won' trus' me!"

"Well, if I will trust you, for the sake of your dead mother, will you be good and faithful to me?"

The man's face lighted up. He took a step toward her.

"Will I? Miss Calline, on'y jes' try me! I kin do anyt'in'!"

"I believe you. Well, I'm going to try you. I want you to be my--well, my body-servant. To go everywhere I go and take care of me--so--I--won't--be--frightened--again. Will you?"

The man's eyes wavered in momentary terror. But he kept his head.

"On'y jes' try me!"

"I'm going to. But you must have a horse to ride. Look out for a good one, and one for me, too. You must get me, 'Polyte, the best saddle-horse in South Carolina!"

"Yas'm. I'll do my bes'. I kin git you a hawse."

"I'll pay you good wages, 'Polyte. But you mustn't drink. If a lady hires you, you can never get drunk, you know."

"I'll tek de pledge."

"Take any pledge that you can keep," said Carolina. She gathered up the reins and turned her horse. The man took a step nearer.

"Well, 'Polyte?"

"Miss Calline--"

"Well?"

"Nobody ain't ever trusted me befo'!"

"Well?"

"Not even my ole mammy. She voodooed me. She said I brought her bad luck, an' everybody tuk up de bad word agin me--"

"Well?"

"Even when I was a child, dey laid ever'thin' awn to me."

"I know."

"Well, you say ''Polyte, I trus' you. You tek care ob me.'"

"Yes, that is what I say."

"Well, Miss Calline, you gwine be teken cah ob!"

"I am sure of it. Good-bye, 'Polyte."

As she rode away, Carolina's shoulders drooped until she seemed fairly to shrink in her saddle.

"If he had touched me--oh, my God!--if he had touched me, I would have killed myself!"

She bowed her face in her hands, and the bitter tears streamed through her fingers.

She strove to think--to quiet herself--no one must know. Suddenly she heard the hoof-beats of a horse behind her. She dashed away her tears and straightened herself in her saddle. If any white man suspected the cause of her agitation, a human life--the life of some black man--would pay the forfeit. 'Polyte's life was in her keeping. She began to think of him as her property,--a human soul given into her power until it could be saved through her ministrations. God help him to have got away! God protect him! Black or white, he was God's child! The tear-stained face of a white woman,--a woman riding alone?

Scintilla had never felt a spur before in her life. Carolina knew it by her snort of fright and surprise. But she needed her best speed to draw away from the avenging white man on her track.

In her stall that night, Scintilla knew that there was a sharp-toothed animal which had bitten her twice in one short ride. She had tried to run away from it, but it was fastened to a woman's heel.

CHAPTER XX.

MOULTRIE

It was the last of March. Spring, which comes so early in the South, was already in the fulfilment of her promise, and no lovelier spot could be found than that portion of South Carolina which contains the estates of Guildford, Sunnymede, and Whitehall.

Carolina, although working hard all of every day and often far into some nights, was happier than she had ever been in her life. She was free from the persecutions of Colonel Yancey at last. Little Gladys was now perfectly healed and as active as other children. Moultrie was proving a most eager and progressive student of Christian Science, and, while most of his narrowness and astonishing ignorance was still painfully in evidence at times when discussions of import took place, yet Carolina held faithfully to the thought that perfect harmony must result in time, and that such a fine mind as he naturally possessed must yield to the enlightenment which most men inherit. Instead of this, however, Moultrie La Grange inherited prejudices which had dwarfed and hampered his mental and spiritual advancement, and which mere friends overlooked. But to Carolina, who loved him, they were heart-breaking. It was as impossible to discuss history with most of her relatives as to expect them to speak Chinese. In the country schools they used a history which described the Civil War as a series of rebel victories, and the outcome of the war was not accounted for in any way. Carolina, in reading the book at Moultrie's request, wondered if the pupils, after a study of its facts, did not question the sanity of Gen. Robert E. Lee for surrendering a victorious and a gloriously successful army to a conquered and outnumbered foe, simply because General Grant asked him to. When she handed the history back to Moultrie, Carolina said, sadly:

"I wonder what you will say when I tell you that my dear father, who was as loyal a Southerner as ever lived, and who entered the Confederate army when he was only sixteen years old, was engaged at the time of his death in an elaborate life of Abraham Lincoln, whom he regarded as the best friend the South ever had, and the noblest patriot America ever produced!"

The young man's face flushed with feeling, but he was too wise to express his bitter disagreement with Carolina's views.

But she knew how he felt and that, unless he deliberately determined to open his mind to the truth in every way, that she never could bring herself to marry him, and thus court discord in her daily life.

He did the best he could, but among his own people he passed muster as an unusually fine fellow, well-educated and progressive. It was only when brought into contact with a broad-minded, cultured young woman like Carolina that Moultrie's intellect showed its limitations. However, the fact that he was proud of his prejudices was the only alarming thing about the whole situation. Carolina saw his possibilities. She recognized his courage; she trusted in his capacity to rouse himself from his ignorance; she knew that he would some day awaken to the impression he made upon cultivated minds. And the more she yielded to his charm, to his chivalrous care of her, to the attraction his almost ideal beauty had for her, the more she was determined to save him in spite of himself. She knew that she could expect no help from his family, who idealized him just as he was, and who would have regarded an intimation that even a Benjamin Franklin would have found him crude, as sacrilege. Nor could relatives or friends avail, for did not all in his little community think as he did, and were not prejudices respected? No, she realized that she must save him unaided and alone. Therefore, when, in a burst of passion which nearly swept her off her feet and left her shaken and trembling, he asked her to marry him, she took her courage in both hands and refused.

He stared at her in a dismay so honest and unfeigned that she almost smiled. Then his face flushed, and he said, in a low, hurt tone:

"I understand. You have urged me to believe that Flower's ancestry was not the disgraceful thing I suspect, when you could not bring yourself to believe it. That can--that must be your only reason, for you love me, Carolina. You have shown me in a hundred ways that you liked my care of you; you have permitted my attentions, you have not discouraged my honest, ardent love, which every one has been a witness to. You do care for me! You cannot deny it."

"Moultrie," said the girl, slowly, "I do not wish to deny it. I never said I did not love you, for I love you more dearly than you know or than you ever will know. I said I would not marry you, but not, oh, not on Flower's account. I believe implicitly in all I have said of her. If that were all, I would marry you to-morrow. But that is not the reason."

"Then what is? Oh, Carolina, love, love!"

"You don't know me at all, Moultrie, or you would know what I am going to say."

"I reckon I don't, dear, for I haven't an idea of the reason."

"Well, it is because we never could be happy together, holding such different ideals and such different codes of honour. Colonel Yancey told my father in London that he would find the South heart-breaking, and it is."

The young man stared into her lovely face in a very genuine astonishment.

"Our codes of honour different, Carolina?" he said. "Oh, I hope not. I should be sorry to think that your code of honour differed from mine."

"And, dear friend--"

"Don't call me friend! I am not your friend! I am your lover!"

"No, let me call you friend, for that is all that I can call you at present. I should be sorry to hold a code of honour no higher than yours."

The slow, dark flush of pride and race rose in the man's fine face. Carolina was daring to say such words to a La Grange. But Carolina herself was a Lee.

"I should be sorry," said Carolina, deliberately, not waiting for his reply, "to be so narrow that I could refuse an offer to improve my land, denuded and mortgaged as it is,--an offer for the only rights I had left to sell, and which would give me plenty of money to enable me to restore the home of my ancestors,--simply because the syndicate furnishing the money was composed of Northern men, thus, for a senseless prejudice, compelling my mother and sister to eke out their income by sewing for negroes!"

Had Carolina struck him in the face, he could not have turned a whiter countenance upon her than he did. Twice he opened his lips to speak and twice closed them again with the futile words still unspoken. His hands were clenched at his side, his whole figure rigid with outraged pride. Yet he continued to look his accuser in the face, and Carolina honoured him for his courage even while she could see self-knowledge dawn and humiliation take the place of his dethroned pride. The first blow had been struck which was to unmask his pitiable attitude,--the attitude of the typical young Southerner of to-day, proud of his worn-out prejudices, and unaware that his very pride in them is in rags.

Carolina clasped her hands to hide their trembling. She could have cried out in pity for the suffering in the face of the man she loved, but she dared not speak one word of the sympathy her heart ached to show, for fear of undoing her work. Blindly she steeled herself for the words she feared would pour forth. Dully she wondered if, when they came, they would end everything between them, and preclude any possible overtures on her part when the leaven should have worked. But the words, bitter or otherwise, did not come. Still he simply stood and looked at her.

Then, with a gesture both graceful and dignified, he bent and took her hand and kissed it.

"I understand," he said, simply, and Carolina, turning away, albeit sick at heart, felt a dawning thrill of pride--her first--that she had come to love this man.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE LIGHT BREAKS

One afternoon, a few days later, there came an hour of stifling heat, and Carolina, sitting in her little cottage room with "Science and Health" on her knees, heard the rise and fall of voices in earnest discussion, which seemed to come from the back porch. When she appeared at the door to ascertain who it was, she found Aunt Calla, the cook at Whitehall, and Aunt Tempy, Flower's baby's mammy, in animated conversation with Rose Maud, her own cook.

"Dar she is now!" exclaimed Calla. "Miss Calline, I was jes' awn my way over hyah to ax yoh advice as to what I shall do wid dat no 'count Lily ob mine, when erlong come Sis Tempy in de Barnwells' cah'yall, sent by Miss Flower to say will you please come over to see de baby right away, en Sis Tempy done fetch me wid her."

"Is anything wrong with the baby?" asked Carolina, quickly.

"No'm! no'm!" cried Tempy. "Miss Flowah got somepin' mighty fine to show you. Miss Callina, de lill fellah kin see!"

"Oh, Tempy, how glad I am to hear it!"

"Well'm, I reckon you is de one what otto hyah it fust," said the old woman, with a shrewd glance.

"Why, what do you mean?" asked Carolina.

The three women settled themselves with such an air of having come to the point that Carolina felt reasonably sure that they had been discussing the affair, and that further concealment was no longer of any avail. She was surprised to see that, instead of the hostility she had feared, each old woman had the appearance of eager curiosity if not of real interest.

"I means, Miss Callina, dat I believes--we all believes--dat you done kunjered" (conjured) "de chile en kyored him," said Calla.

"I ain't a-saying dat," put in Tempy. "I ain't a-saying but what you is raised de spell what de voodoo done put awn de chile."

"En I tells um, Miss Callina," ventured Rose Maud, Carolina's own cook, "dat hit's yoh new religion what done it, en I tole em I believed dat you is de Lawd Jesus come down to yearth de secon' time, wid power to heal de sick, to cast out debbils, en to raise de dead."

"Rose Maud, Jesus was a man, and you know that He will never take the form of a woman," said Carolina, "so don't ever say such a foolish thing again. But He gave that power to His disciples, and this new religion of mine you are talking about gives that same power both to men and women."

"Miss Callina," cried Tempy and Calla at the same time, "has you got dat power?"

"Ask Rose Maud," said Carolina.

"I done tole 'em, Miss Callina," cried Rose Maud. "But dey is bofe doubtin' Thomases. Dey won't believe until dey sees."

"Miss Callina," pleaded Calla, "I cain't believe jis' caze I wants tuh so bad. Ef you kin mek me believe, I would fall down awn my face wid joy. I ain't never been satisfied wid no religion. Sis Tempy will tell you. Ise done jined de chutch en fell from grace mo' times den I kin count. But, missy, even niggers want a trufe dat dey kin cling tuh!"

"Dat's a fack, Miss Callina!" broke in Aunt Tempy. "En ef you will jis' put awn yoh hat en go wid us in de Barnwells' cah'yall, en 'splain t'ings to us lake Jesus done when He tuk de walk to Emyus" (Emmaus), "you will be talkin' to thirsty sinners what are des a-begging of you fur de water ob life!"

Carolina remembered the great number of intelligent coloured faces which were scattered through the congregations of the beautiful white marble church, with its splendour and glory of stained glass, in New York, and she wondered if here, in the pleadings of these three fat old coloured women in the pine forest of South Carolina lay the answer to the great and ever burning question of the white man's burden. As she debated swiftly, her heart leaped to the task. It was not for her to refuse to spread the truth when it was so humbly and earnestly desired.

"Come then," she said, "ask me questions, and I will tell you the answers that my new religion teaches. You may come, too, Rose Maud."

The Barnwells' carryall went slowly out through the great avenue of live-oaks from Carolina's little cottage at Guildford into the "big road" which led to Sunnymede. But no one thought of the incongruity of the three old coloured women and Jake, letting the horses drive themselves, while he listened with pathetic eagerness to the clear, earnest tones of the white young lady, who simply and sincerely answered the questions all four asked of her with such painful anxiety and eager understanding.

Meanwhile the storm, which the intense heat presaged, gathered, and they hurried the horses in order to reach Sunnymede before it broke.

"Dat's all I ask," cried Aunt Tempy. "I don' need to ax no mo' questions. Miss Callina done fixed t'ings for old Tempy."

"I allus knowed dat I was a worshipper ob de unknown God," cried Calla. "Ef I had 'a' knowed de right One, does y'all reckon He would 'a' let me get away? No, suh! De Lawd hol's awn tuh His own!"

The storm broke just as they reached Flower's little cabin in the dreary stump-filled waste which had once been the handsome estate of the La Granges. Flower met them at the door and welcomed them in.

"Hurry, Jake, and get the horses safe before the rain comes. Aunt Tempy, take Calla and Rose Maud to the kitchen and give them some sassafras tea. Oh, Cousin Carolina, dearest, did Tempy tell you? Oh, the blessed, blessed news! For two nights now, the lamb has turned over in his crib because the light hurt his eyes. I didn't send for you the first time because I wanted to be sure. I was reading the fourteenth of John, and when I came to the verse, 'And if ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it,' I just threw the Bible down and fell on my face on the floor and begged God for my baby's eyesight. And, when I looked, he had turned over. Oh, Cousin Carol, Cousin Carol, I think I shall go mad with joy!"

"Let me see him," cried Carolina, rushing past Flower and snatching up the baby. "Oh, yes, dearest, I can see even a different expression in his eyes. And see how he blinks in the light! Flower, your baby is healed!"

"I know it," said Flower, reverently. "And I shall thank God for it on my knees every day of my life."

A terrific flash of lightning at that moment almost blinded them. It was followed instantaneously by a clap of thunder which nearly rent the cabin in twain. Flower immediately seized her baby, with a face made ashen by fear, and looking apprehensively at windows and doors, she whispered:

"The voodoo! Watch for her! She always comes in a thunder-storm!"

At the same time the three old women, with Jake, and Flower's black cook, old Eloise Lu, stumbled into the room, crying:

"Foh de Lawd's sake, Miss Flower, honey, let us in hyah! De Day of Judgment sho has come!"

"Nonsense!" cried Carolina, with a sternness none of them had ever suspected her of possessing. "For shame, you Tempy and Rose Maud and Calla! Where is your new religion? Where is your understanding of the truth? Is God going to punish you for coming to Him as you just told me you had come? Oh, faithless disciples! Now see if I am afraid of a little thunder and lightning!"

They straightened up under her words, and, with rapidly clearing faces, they watched her go toward the open door. The rain was coming straight down with a terrific tropical downpour, and, as Carolina stepped suddenly to the open door, she saw the same figure she had seen before, in the act of leaving a little clump of pine-trees to come nearer to the cabin. The figure spied Carolina at the same time, and, lifting a hand, beckoned to the girl. Without a thought of fear, but with rather a wild questioning hope in her heart, Carolina, to the amazement of the cabin inmates, and later on no less to her own, stepped out into the pouring rain and ran toward the shelter of the trees.

They all crowded into the doorway to see her go, and, when they recognized the other figure, they were speechless with awe.

Miss Carolina had deliberately gone to meet the voodoo and lift the curse! Then she was indeed a chosen one of God!

CHAPTER XXII.

IN THE VOODOO'S CAVE

As Carolina felt the rain drenching her to the skin, the thought came to her, "This is the first time in all my life that I ever was thoroughly wet with rain, yet to how many of the less favoured ones of earth this must be no unusual occurrence. How sheltered my life has been!"

And the thought of God's protection went with her as she approached the motionless figure under the pines.

At first Carolina took the woman to be a quadroon, but, on a nearer view, she saw that none of the features was African. Rather the high cheekbones and sombre eyes suggested the Indian.

The woman held out her hand, and, as Carolina yielded hers, the woman said, in a voice whose tones vibrated with a resemblance to Flower's:

"You must come with me. You will not be afraid. You are a Lee. I have been waiting a long, long time to get speech with you, but your wet clothes must be dried. Will you follow me?"

"Willingly," said Carolina, gently.

The woman did not smile, but her face lighted.

"You will not be sorry," she said, tersely. Then she turned and led the way.

The rain still came down in torrents, but, as Carolina was already wet through, she thoroughly enjoyed the novel sensation. She remembered how often, as a child, she had begged to be allowed to go out and get sopping wet--just once!--and had been denied.

Suddenly the woman paused.

"Do you know where we are?" she said.

Carolina looked around, but could see no possible place of concealment. The ground was flat and somewhat rocky. The river made a sudden bend here, and in this clearing lay huge pieces of rock half-embedded in the soil. The timber had been cut, and now a second growth of scrubby trees had grown up, hedging the spot in a thicket of underbrush.

"No," said Carolina. "I never was here before."

"But you will come many times again," said the woman. "Look!"

She knelt in the sand and scratched away with both hands at the base of a great rock, until she came to its edge. Then with one hand she pushed, and the great boulder was balanced so neatly on its fellow that it slid back, revealing a natural cave.

The cool, underground air came in a wave to Carolina's nostrils, laden with mystery. Only one moment she hesitated.