Dianthe stood over the old woman and shook her by the arm, with a look of utter horror that froze her blood. “My brothers! Both those men!”

The old woman mumbled and groaned, then started up.

Aunt Hannah breathed hard once or twice. Minute after minute passed. From time to time she glanced at Dianthe, her hard, toil-worn hands strained at the arms of her chair as if to break them. Her mind seemed wavering as she crooned:

“My Mira’s children; by de lotus-lily on each leetle breast I claim them for de great Osiris, mighty god. Honey, hain’t you a flower on your breast?”

Dianthe bowed her head in assent, for speech had deserted her. Then old Aunt Hannah undid her snowy kerchief and her dress, and displayed to the terrified girl the perfect semblance of a lily cut, as it were, in shining ebony.

“Did each of Mira’s children have this mark?”

“Yes, honey; all of one blood!”

Dianthe staggered as though buffeted in the face. Blindly, as if in some hideous trance, reeling and stumbling, she fell. Cold and white as marble, she lay in the old woman’s arms, who thought her dead. “Better so,” she cried, and then laughed aloud, then kissed the poor, drawn face. But she was not dead.

Time passed; the girl could not speak. The sacrilege of what had been done was too horrible. Such havoc is wrought by evil deeds. The first downward step of an individual or a nation, who can tell where it will end, through what dark and doleful shades of hell the soul must pass in travail?

“The laws of changeless justice bind

Oppressor and oppressed;

And close as sin and suffering joined,

We march to Fate abreast.”27

The slogan of the hour is “Keep the Negro down!” but who is clear enough in vision to decide who hath black blood and who hath it not? Can any one tell? No, not one; for in His own mysterious way He has united the white race and the black race in this new continent. By the transgression of the law He proves His own infallibility: “Of one blood have I made all nations of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth,” is as true to-day as when given to the inspired writers to be recorded. No man can draw the dividing line between the two races, for they are both of one blood!

Bending a little, as though very weak, and leaning heavily upon her old grandmother’s arm, Dianthe at length set out for the Hall. Her face was lined and old with suffering. All hope was gone; despair was heavy on her young shoulders whose life was blasted in its bloom by the passions of others.

As she looked upward at the grey, leaden sky, tears slowly trickled down her cheeks. “God have mercy!” she whispered.