“Don’t try to move him,—­it is too late,” said Dorr, sharply.

The moonlight steeped mountain and sky in a fresh whiteness.  Lamar’s face, paling every moment, hardening, looked in it like some solemn work of an untaught sculptor.  There was a breathless silence.  Ruth, kneeling beside him, felt his hand grow slowly colder than the snow.  He moaned, his voice going fast,—­

“At two, Ben, old fellow!  We’ll be free to-night!”

Dave, stooping to wrap the blanket, felt his hand wet:  he wiped it with a shudder.

“As he hath done unto My people, be it done unto him!” he muttered, but the words did not comfort him.

Lamar moved, half-smiling.

“That’s right, Floy.  What is it she says?  ’Now I lay me down’——­I forget.  Good night.  Kiss me, Floy.”

He waited,—­looked up uneasily.  Dorr looked at his wife:  she stooped, and kissed his lips.  Charley smoothed back the hair from the damp face with as tender a touch as a woman’s.  Was he dead?  The white moonlight was not more still than the calm face.

Suddenly the night-air was shattered by a wild, revengeful laugh from the hill.  The departing soul rushed back, at the sound, to life, full consciousness.  Lamar started from their hold,—­sat up.

“It was Ben,” he said, slowly.

In that dying flash of comprehension, it may be, the wrongs of the white man and the black stood clearer to his eyes than ours:  the two lives trampled down.  The stern face of the boatman bent over him:  he was trying to stanch the flowing blood.  Lamar looked at him:  Hall saw no bitterness in the look,—­a quiet, sad question rather, before which his soul lay bare.  He felt the cold hand touch his shoulder, saw the pale lips move.

“Was this well done?” they said.

Before Lamar’s eyes the rounded arch of gray receded, faded into dark; the negro’s fierce laugh filled his ear:  some woful thought at the sound wrung his soul, as it halted at the gate.  It caught at the simple faith his mother taught him.

“Yea,” he said aloud, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.”

Dorr gently drew down the uplifted hand.  He was dead.

“It was a manly soul,” said the Northern captain, his voice choking, as he straightened the limp hair.

“He trusted in God?  A strange delusion!” muttered the boatman.

Yet he did not like that they should leave him alone with Lamar, as they did, going down for help.  He paced to and fro, his rifle on his shoulder, arming his heart with strength to accomplish the vengeance of the Lord against Babylon.  Yet he could not forget the murdered man sitting there in the calm moonlight, the dead face turned towards the North,—­the dead face, whereon little Floy’s tears should never fall.  The grave, unmoving eyes seemed to the boatman to turn to him with the same awful question.