"Zora, there's only one way: do something; if you sit thus brooding
you'll go crazy."

"Do crazy folks forget?"

"Nonsense, Zora!" Miss Smith ridiculed the girl's fantastic vagaries;
her sound common sense rallied to her aid. "They are the people who
remember; sane folk forget. Work is the only cure for such pain."

"But there's nothing to do--nothing I want to do--nothing worth
doing--now."

"The Silver Fleece?"

The girl sat upright.

"The Silver Fleece," she murmured. Without further word, slowly she
arose and walked down the stairs, and out into the swamp. Miss Smith
watched her go; she knew that every step must be the keen prickle of
awakening flesh. Yet the girl walked steadily on.

* * * * *

It was the Christmas--not Christmas-tide of the North and West, but
Christmas of the Southern South. It was not the festival of the Christ
Child, but a time of noise and frolic and license, the great Pay-Day of
the year when black men lifted their heads from a year's toiling in the
earth, and, hat in hand, asked anxiously: "Master, what have I earned?
Have I paid my old debts to you? Have I made my clothes and food? Have I
got a little of the year's wage coming to me?" Or, more carelessly and