There was nothing for Ellis to say.  In his heart he could not defend the deeds of this day.  The petty annoyances which the whites had felt at the spectacle of a few negroes in office; the not unnatural resentment of a proud people at what had seemed to them a presumptuous freedom of speech and lack of deference on the part of their inferiors,—­these things, which he knew were to be made the excuse for overturning the city government, he realized full well were no sort of justification for the wholesale murder or other horrors which might well ensue before the day was done.  He could not approve the acts of his own people; neither could he, to a negro, condemn them.  Hence he was silent.

“Thank you, Mr. Ellis,” exclaimed Miller, when they had reached the house where he expected to find his wife.  “This is the place where I was going.  I am—­under a great obligation to you.”

“Not at all, Dr. Miller.  I need not tell you how much I regret this deplorable affair.”

Ellis went back down the street.  Fastening his horse to the fence, Miller sprang forward to find his wife and child.  They would certainly be there, for no colored woman would be foolhardy enough to venture on the streets after the riot had broken out.

As he drew nearer, he felt a sudden apprehension.  The house seemed strangely silent and deserted.  The doors were closed, and the Venetian blinds shut tightly.  Even a dog which had appeared slunk timidly back under the house, instead of barking vociferously according to the usual habit of his kind.

XXXIV

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Miller knocked at the door.  There was no response.  He went round to the rear of the house.  The dog had slunk behind the woodpile.  Miller knocked again, at the back door, and, receiving no reply, called aloud.

“Mrs. Butler!  It is I, Dr. Miller.  Is my wife here?”

The slats of a near-by blind opened cautiously.

“Is it really you, Dr. Miller?”

“Yes, Mrs. Butler.  I am looking for my wife and child,—­are they here?”

“No, sir; she became alarmed about you, soon after the shooting commenced, and I could not keep her.  She left for home half an hour ago.  It is coming on dusk, and she and the child are so near white that she did not expect to be molested.”

“Which way did she go?”

“She meant to go by the main street.  She thought it would be less dangerous than the back streets.  I tried to get her to stay here, but she was frantic about you, and nothing I could say would keep her.  Is the riot almost over, Dr. Miller?  Do you think they will murder us all, and burn down our houses?”

“God knows,” replied Miller, with a groan.  “But I must find her, if I lose my own life in the attempt.”

Surely, he thought, Janet would be safe.  The white people of Wellington were not savages; or at least their temporary reversion to savagery would not go as far as to include violence to delicate women and children.  Then there flashed into his mind Josh Green’s story of his “silly” mother, who for twenty years had walked the earth as a child, as the result of one night’s terror, and his heart sank within him.