WHAT was that? No! It could not be—it could not be! She strained nearer to the door, listening with every nerve, every muscle, while the child whimpered about her skirts, uncomprehending.

  "Hush, Harry—hush, mother's lamb!" she begged him breathlessly. "Mother must listen—she must heah what they're sayin' in thar. Oh, my Gawd!"

  The boy struggled, terrified, in the sudden strangling clutch of her arms. But the dark face bent above him was tearless. Grief may weep; not utter Tragedy.

  "Sell you—that's what mas'r says," whispered the mother, slowly. "Take you away from me whar I'll never see you again—do you heah, baby? Hush, dear, dont cry. Mother'll take keer of you."

  She staggered, with him still frantically held to her bosom, into her own little room and laid him on the bed. She must think, must plan. But the dumb brain of her stood motionless, as in a nightmare the sleeper sees a wild horror advancing upon him and yet cannot move. She was of a race trained by grim generations to obey, not to act. An animal does not reason. Eliza, dark-haired, young in womanhood and beauty, was an animal in the eyes of the law.

  "Why, Eliza child, what is the matter? I've rung for you five times!" The voice was slightly petulant, but kind. The girl turned to face her mistress, with a little cry of relief.

  "Oh, missus! oh, missus!" she gasped breathlessly. "You wouldn't let mas'r sell my Harry, would you? I heard them talking in thar just now, him an' Mas'r Haley, the trader, and I thought—I thought——"

  "Nonsense! Sell Harry!" Mrs. Shelby was amused. She patted the girl's clasped hands reassuringly. "Why, I believe your master would just as soon think of selling our own son. Now, dry your eyes, my dear, for I have good news. Your husband is out on the porch, waiting to see you."

  "George? Heah?" Eliza ran to the glass to hide the traces of her recent fear. Not to him, her husband, could she tell it. He had so much to bear himself, poor George.

  "Come, Harry—come see papa," she cried, setting the boy on his feet and smoothing back his long, dark curls. The child followed her shyly, peering about her skirts at the new-

  "Yes," he answered her unspoken question, "yes, girl, I'm off. I've called that man 'mas'r' for the last time. It's good-by for us, dear. I dont s'pose I'll evah see you-all again——"

  He held her suddenly, hunger-close; then thrust her away almost roughly.

  "Oh, George!" she sobbed. "I kaint bear it if you go. You'll get caught——"

  "Not alive."

  She hid her face hopelessly in shuddering hands. He watched her, frowning.

  "Eliza," he said tensely, at last, "I'd rather see you dead, you and Harry, than sold again. You got a good home heah, but remember, girl, you'd better be dead than belong to most masters. Now kiss me, dear—I got to go." Wild kisses they were, and wild hands that clutched and clasped and could not tear away. It was forever that they parted, tho, between her sobs, she tried to tell him they would surely meet again.

  The cheery cabin glowed in the firelight, pleasantly odorous of a good supper just cooked and eaten. Odors of pound-cake, of brown flapjacks and corn-pone mingled with the resinous spice of the pine-knots on the coals. Young Mas'r George, pride of the Shelby household and patronizing tutor of its servant portion, had just left, gorged with the finest cooking of the South, and Uncle Tom sat by the table, trying, with patient, laboring fingers, to trace a copy of the schoolboy flourishes on the slate. Aunt Chloe, in intervals of tucking her assortment of woolly heads into bed, paused occasionally to stare admiringly at his progress over his shoulder. The noisy old clock on the mantel ticked peace, the fire hissed it, the squeak of the pencil, shrilling on its task, echoed it.

  Suddenly a wild face at the window, and fierce fingers beating on the glass.

  "Why, 'Liza chile, whatevah de matter?" Aunt Chloe flung open the door, letting in the haggard, pallid figure. There was Terror in the clutch she had of her sleeping child—Desperation in the hasty folds of her garments—Flight in every hunted glance and taut and straining nerve.

  "Hush!" she said rapidly, thru ashen lips. "Hush—some one will heah. They mustn't. I'm running away!"

  She pointed to the sleeping boy on her breast.

  "They've sold him," she said stonily. "They were going to take him away from his mother, but they shant do it! And mas'r's done sold you, too, Uncle Tom."

  The phantoms of Terror and Flight drew nearer in the stricken silence, leering. Aunt Chloe began a wailing cry, but otherwise the room was still. The girl leaned forward, plucking the old man's sleeve.

  "Come with me," she whispered. "Dont let them sell you. There's no time to lose—come!"

  But Uncle Tom shook his head.

  "No, 'Liza, no. Ah reckon Ah kaint. Ah aint nebber fail mas'r yit. But it's diff'runt with yo'. Go 'long, 'Liza, an' Gawd help yo', gal!"

  Yes, God help her! Out again into the night that crackled and sparkled with traitorous snow. On across the familiar fields of home, past landmarks that, to her desperate eyes, seemed threatening, alien shapes, like a friend's face seen thru a fog of delirium. Then came the roadway, every turn a threat of horrors feared and looked for, and of the greater horrors that are unknown. Sky and earth swam in a dim, gray haze. Nothing had reality—not the tree-trunks, the fences, the sleeping houses, the waking stars, not God nor

  A cold day opened sullen eyes at last, and Eliza was obliged to pause. There could be no running now, where prying eyes might question. She brushed her hair back and arranged her shawl decently, trying to reassure the frightened child.

  "When 'll we det dere, mama?" he asked anxiously, looking up into her pale, drawn face.

  "Ah, God knows, my boy! They must have discovered we are gone now—they must be starting after. No one in sight yet, but we must hurry. When will we get there? God knows!"

  But she only answered, smiling bravely: "Soon, I hope, dear, soon."

  It was afternoon before the end came. She found herself standing by the bank of the river, looking, with hopeless eyes, at the black water swirling by, and the gray-white ice-chunks tipping, screeching, grinding like cruel, restless teeth. She was trapped. And now behind her, at last, she heard, as an animal at bay hears, the cry of the human hounds on her trail. A quick glance about showed them—three in all, the trader,

  It was a miracle that happened. Only mother-love, in these latter days, is capable of miracles. Behind her was danger to her boy, before her only the hungry water and the frail ice, tossing, rolling on the tide. She did not stop to reason, to choose, even to pray. As the nearest dirty, coarse hand hovered over her shoulder, she sprang suddenly out from the shore onto one of the whirling cakes of ice that careened and shivered under the sudden weight. As it rolled beneath her feet, she leaped to another, then another, never pausing, or the last one would surely have sucked her down. Now her foot slipped; now an ice-cake cracked and groaned, sending frozen spray over her, but on she fled desperately, not knowing she was doing the impossible; only that, impossible or not, she must do it. And then, like merciful unconsciousness after pain, the bank at last, and a strangely familiar face above hers.

  "George!" she whispered weakly, and began to cry.

  "Thank God!" he said solemnly. "See, dear, a little further. There are some good Quaker friends here with a wagon. God has brought us together again. He must mean that we are to be free."

  And so it was with these three. A little farther pursuit, a shot exchanged with the pursuers, and the crestfallen Haley and his friends, one of them cursing a bleeding wrist, turned back to the boat that had brought them across Eliza's way.

  "Well, I'm a clean thousand out on th' black brat," groaned Haley, morosely. "I'm goin' t' hit it peart back to Shelby's, or th' nigger Tom 'll be up t' th' same tricks. Ef he's still thar when I gits thar, I'll fix him so he wont do much runnin'."

  "But, Mr. Haley, shackles are quite unnecessary. Tom has given you his word," begged Mrs. Shelby, pitifully. Haley laughed scornfully.

  "A nigger's word!" he jeered. "Beg pardon, ma'am, but they're a lyin', thievin' lot, an' no one on 'em's any better'n another. I kaint afford t' lose this 'un."

  As Tom clambered awkwardly into the wagon beside his new master, young George Shelby came out dolefully, to stand beside him and shake his hand. "Never mind, Uncle Tom," said the boy, "never you mind. I'm fifteen now, and soon I'll be a man. Then I'll come and find you and buy you back again, true's you live!"

  "Will yo', Mas'r George?" said Uncle Tom, hopefully. His childlike mind leaped the dreary present to a possibly joyous home-coming ahead. Then the glow went out of the black face suddenly.

  "Thank yo', Mas'r George; thank yo'," he said, but his last glimpse of the cabin was wavery thru patient, hopeless tears. Uncle Tom had not been a slave for fifty-five years without knowing something of what awaited him and how unlikely it was that he would ever see his fat, black, faithful Chloe or his fat, black pickaninnies again. Did he, perhaps, feel the sting of the lash already across his aching shoulders?

  With his gang of human merchandise, Haley took passage on a Mississippi side-wheeler, and the slave-deck was filled with black men and women, who hid their misery and dread under a veil of laughter and song. Many of them knew that the future could, at least, be no worse than the past; hoped that it might even be better. The wide blue water, warm sun and motion of the boat pleased their simple senses, and, childishly, their former woes grew fainter in remembering. Uncle Tom, hunched quietly in his corner, did not join in the banjo-picking, hymn-shouting or buck-dancing about him. But even he was not entirely forlorn. From the moment that he first saw Her, he had an incentive for his days. In his mind he spelled her with a capital letter. He was not quite sure that she was a human thing, she was so small and lovely and fragile-looking. But

  She might have been nine or ten, if fairies have ages, and her name was Eva St. Clair. That was all Uncle Tom knew of his little comforter until the terrible thing happened that gave him, in the end, a new owner.

  A tiny splash below the slave-deck, and the heart-sickening sight of golden curls, frail as gossamer, in the hungry clutch of the river. Above, where the white passengers were, shrilled women's insane shrieks and a man's voice shouting:

  "Eva—my precious Eva! A boat!"

  In the water beside the threads of gold, appeared a black head, surrounded by white, woolly fringe. To those hanging breathlessly over the railing it seemed that the rescuer must be too late. Had she not disappeared already in that blue, angry foam? But no, thank God! he has her—he is swimming toward the ship—hysterical hands help drag him aboard. The first to reach them is a tall, slender gentleman, white to his handsome full lips. He snatches the limp little figure to his breast, and a pair of weak, white arms fling themselves comfortingly about his neck.

  "Dont cry, papa," said Eva, comfortingly. "Uncle Tom and God saved me. I'm all right. And please, papa, please"—the thin arms clung closer, coaxing—"wont you buy me Uncle Tom?"

  A week later the carriage that drove up to the luxuriously bepillared house, set in the orange-grove, brought St. Clair, his cousin Orphelia, a sternly disapproving New Englander, and little Eva, clinging protectingly to the big, black hand, of Uncle Tom. A languid, lovely lady, with a look of professional invalidism about her petulant mouth, rose from a couch in the drawing-room.

  "Yo'-all cert'nly have taken yo'

  "This is Uncle Tom, mama," said the child, proudly. "Papa gave him to me. He can make walnut faces. I like Uncle Tom."

  "Oh, well! o' co'se yo' papa can buy new slaves when we already have mo' than we need," sighed the mother, fretfully. "But take him out, Eva; I'm right cert'n he's trackin' up the flo'."

  And so came Uncle Tom to his new home, and, in spite of his new mistress' doubtful welcome, his big, warm heart was very glad. For was not Eva here? It was she who taught him to read, haltingly, from the pages of her own Bible.

  "For," said Eva, wisely, "it's only ign'rant not to know how to read newspapers, but it's wrong not to know how to read the Bible, Uncle Tom."

  She had a simple, childish creed of her own fashioning, as much a part of her as her nimbus of yellow hair and the faint flush that came and went under her lucent skin. Life was very lovely, full of myrtles and roses and ponies and friends, so God who made it must also be very good and kind. She was happy, so she must make others happy. And no one could be happy who was not good. The languid, fashionably dressed mother laughed at the child's ideas; Miss Orphelia shook her head secretly and worried over the cough that often shook little Eva's slight frame; St. Clair watched his daughter as she prattled in the garden beside Uncle Tom, or administered grave reproof to incorrigible Topsy, Miss Orphelia's maid, and smiled sadly, as a soiled soul smiles wistfully at innocence, murmuring under his breath: "And a little child—a little child——"

  Topsy was Eva's special trial. She was impudent, thieving as a jackdaw, nimble-tongued in excuses—as complete a heathen as the most aspiring missionary could desire to convert.

  "I should think, Topsy," said the child, gravely, one day, "that being as bad as you are would hurt. I'd like to know you were going to try to be good before I go——"

  "Befo' yo' go whar, Miss Evie?"

  A strange look came into the clear child-eyes. Eva sighed gently, then smiled. "It's pretty here, isn't it, Topsy?"—she gestured to the lawn, flower-starred; the sycamores and rose-garden beyond the porch pillars—"but where I'm going it's prettier still. I want to go, but I'm afraid you'll be naughty after I'm not here any longer, and papa will be lonely—and Uncle Tom——"

  A shadow fell across the delicate face. It was almost invisible now, but it was never to leave it again. As the rose-leaves rustled in sweet-scented death across the driveway, the child's step fell slower, her laugh rang fainter, and those who loved her, white and black alike, saw, with dread, the Shadow growing clearer day by day.

  "Li'l miss goin' to Hebben sho'," wailed the darkies among themselves.

  It was Uncle Tom who was with her when the Shadow drew, at last, very near indeed. She swayed in the saddle on her pony, and his big, tremulous arms caught her and bore her up the steps to her white little room. No whiter the sheets than the tiny face above them; the sunshine, creeping like a tender touch across the pillow, was no brighter than her hair.

  It did not seem like death, this peaceful passing out with all the loved faces close about the bedside smiling tenderly thru their grief, because it was too beautiful a time for tears. To Uncle Tom, who knelt at the bed's foot, it seemed as tho the pearly gates of his childlike faith were swinging slowly open, and that the celestial light from within was pouring out thru Eva's radiant eyes. "De power—an' de glory—an' de glory—" he murmured aloud.

  Perhaps she caught the word. With a little, joyful cry, Eva sat up, flinging her tiny arms wide. "Glory—light—so beautiful!" she cried. "See!" And she fell back straightly, like a lily broken from the stem, the Shadow gone from the placid, smiling face. Then, at last, tears and the eerie wailing of the slaves; the mother's fretful sobs; Topsy's wild cries, "Ah'm goin' t' be good, Miss Evie—Ah'm goin' t' be!" and the father's hard-wrung groan.

  Uncle Tom, tiptoeing from the room, knew that his pleasant days were over, and that soon he must move on, like a powerless chip swirled in the maelstrom of life from sheltered eddy to the dark clutch of the tide.

  It came sooner, even, than he had foreseen. The young master, reckless now of life, was brought home in the month of Eva's death, killed by a vicarious wound in a tavern brawl; the hysterical widow shut up the great, silent house, and the slaves went under the hammer of the auctioneer, like cattle offered up for sale.

  "How much for Tom, fifty-five, strong, steady? Five hundred? Five-fifty? Six? Seven? Going—going—ah, eight hundred! Once—twice—sold to Simon Legree!"

  When the hammer fell, and Uncle Tom stepped from the block into the coarse, thick hands of his new owner, was there, perhaps, the sound of sobbing away back in a little cabin beyond the Mississippi, where a stout old negro woman sat before the fireplace thinking of her "ole man"? Simon Legree had cold, cruel eyes and a bulldog jaw. He hustled his new purchases together, looking them over with grim satisfaction—three other negroes, burly, thick of lip and soul; a sickly yellow woman, and a comely mulatto girl. Legree licked his lips as he glanced at her.

  "Now, you niggers!" he said harshly. "Understand, I own ye body an' soul. Now pile int' th' wagon, an' we'll hit f'r home."

  At the end of the journey, a dismal house and outbuildings on the edge of a swamp, with cottonfields abloom beyond the "quarters" and unkempt dogs everywhere. Legree handed his

  "H'ar, you Cassie," said Legree; "I brought ye a gal t' keep ye company, an' me." He chuckled meaningly and strode away. The girl crept, wild with terror, close to the older woman, sobbing.

  "Oh! whar am I—whar am I?" she moaned. Cassie laughed mirthlessly aloud. "Yo're in hell, gal; that's whar!" she said, but the arm she placed about the shaking figure was kind.

  And Uncle Tom? "Body and soul!" Legree had said. But Legree was wrong. Body, yes—the poor, old, black frame, with the gnarled, knotty hands and the kindly, patient eyes. But soul—that was a different matter.

  It was a month later that Legree discovered this. The sickly yellow woman staggered in from the fields one evening with a basket of cotton sadly under weight. Her master, scowling at the scales, cursed her loudly and turned to Uncle Tom, thrusting a dog-lash with vicious fangs into his fingers.

  "Hyar, you," he yelled, "lick that thar lazy wench f'r me!"

  Uncle Tom did not move. Legree stared at him, baring his yellow fangs.

  "Hear me, y'u dog?" he screamed. "Ef y'u know what's good f'r ye——"

  "Ah kaint do it, mas'r," said Uncle Tom, gently. He saw the murder in the other's furious eyes, but did not shrink or move until the great cowhide boot of the slave-owner sent him crashing to the ground.

  "Kaint, eh?" snarled Legree,

  Later—ages later, reckoning by throbs of swollen flesh and pangs of pain—the old man, lying huddled on the dirt floor of the outhouse, heard his name called softly from the moonlit doorway. Two women's figures stood there beckoning.

  "Hit's Cassie an' Emmeline," whispered one, hurriedly. "We're goin' t' run away. We come t' get y'u-all, too, po' man——"

  "No"—the words came difficultly from the old man's swollen lips—"no, Ah've got t' stay, Ah reckon. Yo' run 'long. Ah'll sho' pray f'r ye, but Ah'm afeard yo' kaint do hit—Ah'm afeard."

  After they had slipped away among the shadows, the old negro lay, hushing his groans to listen for the sounds he dreaded. They were not long in coming—the baying of bloodhounds loosed on a trail; fierce shouts and galloping, and the flare of pitch-pine torches in the darkness. "Gawd help 'em!" prayed Uncle Tom, fervently, thru his own mists of pain. In the morning, stiff and sore in every muscle, he heard the hunt returning and crept out to learn its outcome.

  Legree, wearing the baffled look of his own hounds, saw the bent figure waiting and ripped out a horrid oath.

  "I'll lay 'twas y'u, y'u dawg!" he shouted, and shook a knotted fist in Tom's face. "Did y'u see them two gals last night—did y'u?"

  "Ah kaint tell yo' nothin', mas'r," said Uncle Tom, firmly. "Yo' kin beat me and kill me, but I kaint tell yo' that."

  From a garret window in the house two faces peered—masks of fear. They saw the great fist fall sickeningly—the old man sprawl loosely to the dust in a huddle of stiffened limbs and lie there very still.

  Emmeline clutched Cassie with a tense little claw. "Ah b'lieve he's done kill him," she gasped. "Oh, Gawd—Gaw'd—Gawd!"

  Into the yard below a wagon clattered; a tall, boyish figure of eighteen or so sprang to the ground.

  "My name is George Shelby," he said to Legree. "I heard you own a negro known as Uncle Tom, and I've come to buy him."

  Legree laughed sullenly, gesturing to the silent heap upon the ground. "Y'u're welcome," he said shortly. "Ah dont sell dead niggers."

  "Dead!" The boy sprang to the crumpled figure, his young face working. "I promised you I'd come for you, and it's too late. Oh, poor Uncle Tom—poor Uncle Tom!"

  That night Legree drank deeply, alone in his wretched room, trying to blot from his mind the sight of a dead black face, curiously pallid and blood-laced, at his feet. The wind was shrill-voiced about the crazy shutters, poking them awry with prying, ghostly fingers. Superstition brought old devil tales to the man's mind, and he was afraid and drank recklessly, trying to escape the horrors that were crowding close. Suddenly his hair rose, pricking his scalp. The handle of his door was turning—turning——He stumbled back on the bed, clawing the air; draperies, ghostly white, fluttered before his fixed, staring eyes. He fell upon his face, foaming, biting the sheet, trying to scream. Two silent figures passed him by and gained the outer air. They hurried swiftly along the highway. Beyond moonset lay freedom.

  Unbroken with the horrid clamor of the chase, the night-air swept cool, long moon-shadows across the world. The pale fingers of light lay softly, reverently over a long outline in the grass, the shape of a fresh-turned grave. A peaceful bed, at last, for Uncle Tom, and emancipation for his white soul in the free country beyond the kindly stars.

  Those same moon-fingers, prying between broken shutters, found a dread face, drawn with horror, twisted into a grimace of madness, staring rigidly up from the wretched bed with blind, unwinking eyes.

  Slavery is an old, old sin. God pity us, it is a new, new one. No longer, perhaps, are bodies sold in the marketplace, yet souls are everywhere in bondage, wailing for the freedom of enlightenment and education; men barter their reputations for a System's gold, children toil unchildishly in factory and mill, the piteous army of Shame wins daily new recruits. It is time for another writer to take up her pen and point the way to freedom. And while waiting hopefully for the new Harriet Beecher Stowe, it will be well for us to re-read, perhaps, the story that once won a race's cause. For Truth is eternal. It is never old nor new.