HEALING
The years brought their healing to wounded hearts. Tom Norton refused to leave his old home. He came of a breed of men who had never known how to quit. He faced the world and with grim determination took up the work for the Republic which his father had begun.
With tireless voice his paper pleads for the purity of the race. Its circulation steadily increases and its influence deepens and widens.
The patter of a baby's feet again echoes through the wide hall behind the white fluted columns. The young father and mother have taught his little hands to place flowers on the two green mounds beneath the oak in the cemetery. He is not old enough yet to understand, and so the last time they were there he opened his eyes wide at his mother's tears and lisped:
"Are 'oo hurt, mama?"
"No, my dear, I'm happy now."
"Why do 'oo cry?"
"For a great man I knew a little while, loved and lost, dearest—your grandfather for whom we named you."
Little Dan's eyes grew very serious as he looked again at the flower-strewn graves and wondered what it all meant.
But the thing which marks the Norton home with peculiar distinction is that since the night of his father's death, Tom has never allowed a negro to cross the threshold or enter its gates.