or his grandchildren might be gentlemen in the town where their
ancestors had once been slaves.

Upon his father's death, shortly after Dr. Miller's return from Europe,
and a year or two before the date at which this story opens, he had
promptly spent part of his inheritance in founding a hospital, to which
was to be added a training school for nurses, and in time perhaps a
medical college and a school of pharmacy. He had been strongly tempted
to leave the South, and seek a home for his family and a career for
himself in the freer North, where race antagonism was less keen, or at
least less oppressive, or in Europe, where he had never found his color
work to his disadvantage. But his people had needed him, and he had
wished to help them, and had sought by means of this institution to
contribute to their uplifting. As he now informed Dr. Burns, he was
returning from New York, where he had been in order to purchase
equipment for his new hospital, which would soon be ready for the
reception of patients.

"How much I can accomplish I do not know," said Miller, "but I'll do
what I can. There are eight or nine million of us, and it will take a
great deal of learning of all kinds to leaven that lump."

"It is a great problem, Miller, the future of your race," returned the
other, "a tremendously interesting problem. It is a serial story which
we are all reading, and which grows in vital interest with each
successive installment. It is not only your problem, but ours. Your race
must come up or drag ours down."

"We shall come up," declared Miller; "slowly and painfully, perhaps, but
we shall win our way. If our race had made as much progress everywhere