one side. A voice called out: "Well I'll be damned if there ain't a
white feller strollin' with a nigger!" "Shut your trap," said the
driver, and the stage rolled rapidly away from us.

My mind was suddenly made up as to the farm by the remark falling so
brutally from these unknown lips. I took Zoe's hands. I drew her to me.
She was weeping. Was not one half of her blood English blood? Yes, and
what Englishman would not resent with tears an insult which he could
neither deny nor punish? But I would punish it. Zoe should have her
rightful half.... And silently we walked back.




CHAPTER IX


The next morning the alarm over the cholera is more intense. All kinds
of horrifying stories go the rounds. News has been brought by passengers
on the stage that a man and his wife, living near the Illinois River,
died within an hour of each other. They were well at dawn. At noon they
were both under the black soil of the river's shore, buried by three
stalwart sons, who carried their bodies in the bed clothing and let them
down by it into hastily made graves.

Something has happened here. The stage driver who silenced the rowdies
last night is stricken this morning at the tavern. He is dead. By noon
he is buried in the village cemetery where the ashes of my father lie.

Mrs. Spurgeon thinks that Reverdy should leave the tavern and come here