Stories in Verse | Page 9

shackle will be forced,
To make, at
last, the nation wholly free."
And Karagwe, who pulled a silent oar,
Shut the winged words in
cages of his heart;
But Coralline was angry at the speech,
And
rained disdain on noble Stanley's head,
Scorning his Northern thought
and Northern blood,
And sighed that it had been their lot to meet.

"If that is true," he said, "then let us part,
And let us hope we shall not
meet again.
Adieu! for I shall see you never more."
The boat was near the bank; he sprang to it,
And left her sitting in the
gilded prow--
Her pride, a raging Hector of the hour,
Fighting a
thousand tears, whose war-cry rose:
Thin patience brings thick
damage in the end.
XVII.
When Richard Wain found that the deed was lost,
Which he had won
at play with Dalton Earl,
Chagrin and rage were ready at a beck,

Like waters in a dam, to pass the race,
And turn the voluble
mill-wheel of his tongue.
He half suspected Dalton Earl the thief,

Yet knew, if this were true, the threat he made
To gain Ruth from
him, would have been in vain.
And so, because he feared to lose his
power,
He kept his secret that the deed was lost.

PART SECOND.
Now through the mighty pulses of the land
Throbbed the dark blood
of war; and Sumter's guns
Were the first heart-beats of a better day.

The avenging angel, with a scourging sword
Of fire and death, with
triumph on his face,
Swept o'er the nation with the cry of War!
Ten
thousand boroughs, dreaming peace, awake.
War in the South, with
the South! War! War!
The shame we nourished stings us to the death.
O, fair, false wife, South! lo, thy lord, the North,
Loveth thee still,
though thou hast gone astray.
In truth's great court, vain has thy trial
been,
For no divorce could there be granted thee.
The child you
bore was bitter curse and shame,
And not the child of thy husband,
the North.
It has led thee to miry paths, and raised
The gall of
despair to thy famished lips;
It were better that such a child should
die.
I.
The first year of the war had passed away
When Richard Wain, the
planter, sprang to arms.
The day for his departure had been set;

To-morrow it would be, and as the night
Fell on the misty hills, and
on the vales,
He sat alone in his accustomed room;
Thinking, he
drowsed; his chin couched on his breast;
A dim light wrought at
shadows on the walls.
Slowly the sash was raised behind him there.

Perhaps he slept; he did not heed the noise,
And Karagwe sprang in,
and faced his foe.
He held a long knife up and brandished it,
And
said, "As surely as you call or move,
Tour life will not be worth a
blade of grass;
But if you do not call, and sign the words,
That I
have written on a paper here,
No harm will come, and I shall go
away."
He drew the paper forth; the planter read:
_I promise if the
deed is ever found
Of Dalton Earl's estate, I in no way
Shall lay a
claim to it to make it mine.
I here surrender all my right to it._

"Why, this I shall not sign, of course," he said.
"You might have
asked me to give back your Ruth,
And I would not have minded; but
your game
Lies deeper than a check upon the queen."
"Sign!" cried the negro; and at Ruth's name,
A sudden madness
leaped along his nerves,
Like flame among the dry prairie grass.

"Sign! for unless you sign this writing now,
You shall not live; now
promise me to sign!"
He caught the planter fiercely by the throat,

Starting his quailing eyes, "Now will you sign or not?
You have ten
seconds more to make your choice."
"Give me the paper then, and I will sign."
The name was written, and
the negro went;
But not an hour had passed, before the hounds
Of
Richard Wain and Dalton Earl were slipped,
And scenting on his
track through stream and field.
II.
The slave first ran toward the hollow tree;
There left the paper signed
by Richard Wain,
Disturbing not the deed; but took the Book,
And
up the tireless road, tied on and on,
Until he gained the borders of a
marsh.
The night was dark, but darker still the clouds
That loomed along the
rim where day had gone.
The wind blew cold, and hastened quickly
past,
Escaping, like a slave, the hound-like clouds
Whose
thunder-barkings sounded in its ears.
And Karagwe had only reached the marsh,
When on his track he
heard the savage dogs.
He knew the paths and windings many miles,

And even in the darkness found his way,
And gained a covert
island, where a hut,
Built by some poor and friendless fugitive,

Afforded shelter and secure abode.
He tarried here until along the
hills
The red-lipped whisper of the morning ran.
Then, when he
would have ventured from the door,
A large black hound arose, and

licked his hand.
The dog was Dalton Earl's; he started back.
The dream of freedom nourished many years
Seemed withering, and
for the moment lost.
For long the