following them with her own. She saw them pass the door where so
many faces yet peered in (he saw them not), and creep along the
wall beyond, inch by inch, breathlessly and with dread, till
finally, with fatal precision, they reached the point where the
screen had stood, and not finding it, flew in open terror to the
door it was set there to conceal--when that something else,
huddled in oozing blood, on the floor beneath, drew them unto
itself with the irresistibleness of grim reality, and he forgot
all else in the horror of a sight for which his fears, however
great, had failed to prepare him.

Dead! BELA! Dead! and lying in his blood! The rest may have been
no dream, but this was surely one, or his eyes, used to inner
visions, were playing him false.

Grasping the table at his side to steady his failing limbs, he
pulled himself along by its curving edge till he came almost
abreast of the helpless figure which for so many years had been
the embodiment of faithful and unwearied service.

Then and then only, did the truth of his great misfortune burst
upon his bewildered soul; and with a cry which tore the ears of
all hearers and was never forgotten by any one there, he flung
himself down beside the dead negro, and, turning him hastily over,
gazed in his face.

Was that a sob? Yes; thus much the heart gave; but next moment the
piteous fact of loss was swallowed up in the recognition of its
manner, and, bounding to his feet with the cry, "Killed! Killed at
his post!" he confronted the one witness of his anguish of whose