"God bless you, Miss Jennie—"
"I'll never be bad no mo'!"
He had come to break the chains that cut through human flesh and he had found this—great God!
For hours he lay awake, dreaming with wide staring eyes of the long blood-stained history of human Slavery and its sharp contrast with the strange travesty of such an institution which the South was giving to the world.
He had barely lost consciousness when he leaped to the floor, roused by loud voices, tramping feet and the flash of weird lights on the lawn. Growls and long calls echoed from point to point on the spacious grounds, hulloes and echoing answers and the tramp of many feet.
Some horrible thing had happened—sudden death, murder or war had broken out. A voice was screaming from the balcony aloft that sounded like the trumpet of the arch-angel calling the end of time.
He listened.
It was old Colonel Barton yelling at the sleepy negroes. In heaven's high name what could they be doing?
Socola dressed hastily and rushed down-stairs. Jennie and the boys appeared almost at the same moment.