accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust,
changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition,
bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where
deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before.
The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral
landscape in much the same way. Some of his low places he found lifted to
ideals, some of his ideas had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the
sackcloth and ashes of pumice stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.

For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking
--trying to get his bearings. It was new work. If he met a friend, he
found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished
--his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a
shake. It was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility, and he blushed
and was abashed. And the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white
friend put out his hand for a shake with him. He found the "nigger" in
him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to a white rowdy and
loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his
secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed
excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on
equal terms. The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and
there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in
all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and uncharacteristic was
Tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when
he passed on; and when he glanced back--as he could not help doing, in
spite of his best resistance--and caught that puzzled expression in a
person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of
view as quickly as he could. He presently came to have a hunted sense
and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the
solitudes. He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him.