They had broken down the wicket:  he saw them lay the heavy body on the lumber outside, the black figures hurrying over the snow.  He laughed low, savagely, watching them.  Free now!  The best of them despised him; the years past of cruelty and oppression turned back, fused in a slow, deadly current of revenge and hate, against the race that had trodden him down.  He felt the iron muscles of his fingers, looked close at the glittering knife he held, chuckling at the strange smell it bore.  Would the Illinois boatman blame him, if it maddened him?  And if Ben took the fancy to put it to his throat, what right has he to complain?  Has not he also been a dweller in Babylon?  He hesitated a moment in the cleft of the hill, choosing his way, exultantly.  He did not watch the North now; the quiet old dream of content was gone; his thick blood throbbed and surged with passions of which you and I know nothing:  he had a lost life to avenge.  His native air, torrid, heavy with latent impurity, drew him back:  a fitter breath than this cold snow for the animal in his body, the demon in his soul, to triumph and wallow in.  He panted, thinking of the saffron hues of the Santilla flats, of the white, stately dwellings, the men that went in and out from them, quiet, dominant,—­feeling the edge of his knife.  It was his turn to be master now!  He ploughed his way doggedly through the snow,—­panting, as he went,—­a hotter glow in his gloomy eyes.  It was his turn for pleasure now:  he would have his fill!  Their wine and their gardens and——­He did not need to choose a wife from his own color now.  He stopped, thinking of little Floy, with her curls and great listening eyes, watching at the door for her brother.  He had watched her climb up into his arms and kiss his cheek.  She never would do that again!  He laughed aloud, shrilly.  By God! she should keep the kiss for other lips!  Why should he not say it?

Up on the hill the night-air throbbed colder and holier.  The guards stood about in the snow, silent, troubled.  This was not like a death in battle:  it put them in mind of home, somehow.  All that the dying man said was, “Water,” now and then.  He had been sleeping, when struck, and never had thoroughly wakened from his dream.  Captain Poole, of the Snake-hunters, had wrapped him in his own blanket, finding nothing more could be done.  He went off to have the Colonel summoned now, muttering that it was “a damned shame.”  They put snow to Lamar’s lips constantly, being hot and parched; a woman, Dorr’s wife, was crouching on the ground beside him, chafing his hands, keeping down her sobs for fear they would disturb him.  He opened his eyes at last, and knew Dorr, who held his head.

“Unfasten my coat, Charley.  What makes it so close here?”

Dorr could not speak.

“Shall I lift you up, Captain Lamar?” asked Dave Hall, who stood leaning on his rifle.

He spoke in a subdued tone, Babylon being far off for the moment.  Lamar dozed again before he could answer.