would rather be in Legree's shoes and have those millions a year than to be Almighty God with hosts of angels singing psalms to me through all eternity."

And the shallow-pated satellites cheered this blasphemy with open-eyed wonder.

The weakest side of his nature was that turned toward women. He was vain as a peacock, and the darling wish of his soul was to be a successful libertine. This was the secret of the cruelty back of his desire of boundless wealth.

He had the intellectual forehead of his Scotch father, large, handsomely modelled features, nostrils that dilated and contracted widely, and the thick sensuous lips of his mother. His eyebrows were straight, thick, and suggested undoubted force of intellect. His hair was a deep red, thick and coarse, but his moustache was finer and it was his special pride to point its delicately curved tips.

His vanity was being stimulated just now by two opposite forces. He was in love, as deeply as such a nature could love, with Sallie Worth. Her continued rejection of his suit had wounded his vanity, but had roused all the pugnacity of his nature to strengthen this apparent weakness.

He had discovered recently that he exercised a potent influence over Mrs. Durham. The moment he was repulsed, his vanity turned for renewed strength toward her. He saw instantly the immense power even the slightest indiscretion on her part woud give him over the Preacher's life. He knew that while he was not a demonstrative man, he loved his wife with intense devotion. He knew, too, that here was the Preacher's weakest spot. In his tireless devotion to his work, he had starved his wife's heart. He had noticed that she always called him "Dr. Durham" now, and that he had gradually fallen into the habit of calling her "Mrs. Durham."

This had been fixed in their habits, perhaps by the change from housekeeping to living at the hotel. Since old Aunt Mary's death, Mrs. Durham had given up her struggle with the modern negro servants, closed her house, and they had boarded for several years.

He saw that if he could entangle her name with his in the dirty gossip of village society, he could strike his enemy a mortal blow. He knew that she had grown more and more jealous of the crowds of silly women that always dog the heels of a powerful minister with flattery and open admiration. He determined to make the experiment.

Mrs. Durham, while nine years his senior, did not look a day over thirty. Her face was as smooth and soft and round as a girl's, her figure as straight and full, and her every movement instinct with stored vital powers that had never been drawn upon.

She was in a dangerous period of her mental development. She had been bitterly disappointed in life. Her loss of slaves and the ancestral prestige of great wealth had sent the steel shaft of a poisoned dagger into her soul. She was unreconciled to it. While she was passing through the anarchy of Legree's régime which followed the war, her unsatisfied maternal instincts absorbed her in the work of relieving the poor and the broken. But when the white race rose in its might and shook off this nightmare and order and a measure of prosperity had come, she had fallen back into brooding pessimism.

She had reached the hour of that soul crisis when she felt life would almost in a moment slip from her grasp, and she asked herself the question, "Have I lived?" And she could not answer.

She found herself asking the reasons for things long accepted as fixed and eternal. What was good, right, truth? And what made it good, right, or true?

And she beat the wings of her proud woman's heart against the bars that held her, until tired, and bleeding she was exhausted but unconquered.

She was furious with McLeod for his open association with negro politicians.

"Allan, in my soul, I am ashamed for you when I see you thus degrade your manhood."

"Nonsense, Mrs. Durham," he replied, "the most beautiful flower grows in dirt, but the flower is not dirt."

"Well, I knew you were vain, but that caps the climax!"

"Isn't my figure true, whether you say I'm dog-fennel or a pink?"

"No, you are not a flower. Will is the soul of man. The flower is ruled by laws outside itself. A man's will is creative. You can make law. You can walk with your head among the stars, and you choose to crawl in a ditch. I am out of patience with you."

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But only for a purpose. You must judge by the end in view."

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There's no need to stoop so low."

I assure you it is absolutely necessary to my aims in life. And they are high enough. I appreciate your interest in me, more than I dare to tell you. You have always been kind to me since I was a wild red-headed brute of a boy. And you have always been my supreme inspiration in work. While others have cursed and scoffed you smiled at me and your smile has warmed my heart in its blackest nights."

She looked at him with a mother-like tenderness.

"What ends could be high enough to justify such methods?"

"I hate poverty and squalour. It's been my fate. I've sworn to climb out of it, if I have to fight or buy my

way through hell to do it. I dream of a palatial home, of soft white beds, grand banquet halls, and music and wine, and the faces of those I love near me. Besides, the work I am doing is the best for the state and the nation."

"But how can you walk arm in arm with a big black negro, as they say you do, to get his vote?"

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Simply because they represent 120,000 votes I need. You can't tell their colour when they get in the box. I use these fools as so many worms. My political creed is for public consumption only. I never allow anybody to impose on me. I don't allow even Allan McLeod to deceive me with a paper platform, or a lot of articulated wind. I'm not a preacher.

She winced at that shot, blushed and looked at him curiously for a moment.

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"No, you are not a preacher. I wish you were a better man."

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So do I, when I am with you," he answered in a low serious voice.

"But I can't get over the sense of personal degradation involved in your association with negroes as your equal," she persisted.

"The trouble is you're an unreconstructed rebel. Women never really forgive a social wrong."

"I am unreconstructed," she snapped with pride. “And you thank God daily for it, don't you?"

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Yes, I do. Human nature can't be reconstructed by the fiat of fools who tinker with laws," she cried.

"These thousands of black votes are here. They've got to be controlled. I'm doing the job."

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You don't try to get rid of them."

Get rid of them? Ye gods, that would be a task! The Negro is the sentimental pet of the nation. Put him on a continent alone, and he will sink like an iron

wedge to the bottomless pit of barbarism. But he is the ward of the Republic-our only orphan, chronic, incapable. That wardship is a grip of steel on the throat of the South. Back of it is an ocean of maudlin sentimental fools. I am simply making the most of the situation. I didn't make it to order. I'm just doing the best I can with the material in hand."

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Why don't you come out like a man and defy this horde of fools?"

Martyrdom has become too cheap. The preachers have a hundred thousand missionaries now we are trying to support."

"Allan, I thought you held below the rough surface of your nature high ideals,-you don't mean this."

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What could one man do against these millions?" "Do!" she cried, her face ablaze. "The history of the world is made up of the individuality of a few men. A little Yankee woman wrote a crude book. The single act of that woman's will caused the war, killed a million men, desolated and ruined the South, and changed the history of the world. The single dauntless personality of George Washington three times saved the colonies from surrender and created the Republic. I am surprised to hear a man of your brain and reading talk like that!" When I am with you and hear your voice I have heroic impulses. You are the only human being with whom I would take the time to discuss this question. But the current is too strong. The other way is easier, and it serves my ends better. Besides, I am not sure it isn't better from every point of view. We've got the Negro here, and must educate him."

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"Hush! Tell that to somebody that hates you, not to me," she cried.

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Don't you "No, I think it is a crime."

think we must educate them?