The woman got up.

“She is, Zur.  She is, Mem.  She’s lookin’ foine in her Sunday suit.  Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say.”

She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet.  A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—­her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a barred plaid skirt, and stained, faded velvet bodice,—­her neck and arms bare.  The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—­the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead.  Margaret leaned over her shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child’s dead neck.

“How young she is!” muttered Knowles.  “Merciful God, how young she is!—­What is that you say?” sharply, seeing Margaret’s lips move.

“‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’”

“Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy.  Put your hand here, on her dead face.  Is your loss like hers?” he said lower, looking into the dull pain in her eyes.  Selfish pain he called it.

“Let me go,” she said.  “I am tired.”

He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderly enough,—­for the girl suffered, he saw.

“What will you do?” he asked her then.  “It is not too late,—­will you help me save these people?”

She wrung her hands helplessly.

“What do you want with me?” she cried, weakly.  “I have enough to bear.”

The burly black figure before her seemed to tower and strengthen; the man’s face in the wan light showed a terrible life-purpose coming out bare.

“I want you to do your work.  It is hard; it will wear out your strength and brain and heart.  Give yourself to these people.  God calls you to it.  There is none to help them.  Give up love, and the petty hopes of women.  Help me.  God calls you to the work.”

She went on blindly:  he followed her.  For years he had set apart this girl to help him in his scheme:  he would not be balked now.  He had great hopes from his plan:  he meant to give all he had:  it was the noblest of aims.  He thought some day it would work like leaven through the festering mass under the country he loved so well, and raise it to a new life.  If it failed,—­if it failed, and saved one life, his work was not lost.  But it could not fail.

“Home!” he said, stopping her as she reached the stile,—­“oh, Margaret, what is home?  There is a cry going up night and day from homes like that den yonder, for help,—­and no man listens.”

She was weak; her brain faltered.

“Does God call me to this work?  Does He call me?” she moaned.

He watched her eagerly.

“He calls you.  He waits for your answer.  Swear to me that you will help His people.  Give up father and mother and love, and go down as Christ did.  Help me to give liberty and truth and Jesus’ love to these wretches on the brink of hell.  Live with them, raise them with you.”