“What did he say to that?”

“I wish you’d seen him!  He pushed back that beautiful hair of his, and his eyes shone, and his mouth trembled, though I could see he tried hard to hold it still, and put up his hand to cover it; and he said, in a solemn sort of way, ’Franklin, you’ve opened a window for me, and I sha’n’t forget what I see through it to-day.’  And then he offered to set me up in some business at once, and urged hard when I declined.”

“Say it all over again, sonny; what was it you told him?”

“I said that would do well enough for a white man; that he could help, and the white man be helped, just as people were being and doing all the time, and no one would think a thought about it.  But, sir,” I said, “everybody says we can do nothing alone; that we’re a poor, shiftless set; and it will be just one of the master race helping a nigger to climb and to stand where he couldn’t climb or stand alone, and I’d rather fight my battle alone.”

“Yes, yes! well, go on, go on.  I like to hear what followed.”

“Well, there was just a word or two more, and then he put out his hand and shook mine, and said good by.  It was the first time I ever shook hands with a white gentleman.  Some white hands have shaken mine, but they always made me feel that they were white and that mine was black, and that it was a condescension.  I felt that, when they didn’t mean I should.  But there was nothing between us.  I didn’t think of his skin, and, for once in my life, I quite forgot I was black, and didn’t remember it again till I got out on the street and heard a dirty little ragamuffin cry, ‘Hi! hi! don’t that nagur think himself foine?’ I suspect, in spite of my lameness, I had been holding up my head and walking like a man.”

In spite of his lameness he was holding up his head and walking like a man now; up and down and across the little room, trembling, excited, the words rushing in an eager flow from his mouth.  His mother sat quietly rocking herself and knitting.  She knew in this mood there was nothing to be said to him; and, indeed, what had she to say save that which would add fuel to the flame?

“Well!”—­a long sigh,—­“after that Mr. Surrey doubled my wages, and was kinder to me than ever, and watched me, as I saw, quite closely; and that was the way he found out about Mr. Snipe.

“You see Mr. Snipe had been very careless about keeping the books; would come down late in the mornings, just before Mr. Surrey came in, and go away early in the afternoons, as soon as he had left.  Of course, the books got behindhand every month, and Mr. Snipe didn’t want to stay and work overhours to make them up.  One day he found out, by something I said, that I understood bookkeeping, and tried me, and then got me to take them home at night and go over them.  I didn’t know then how bad he was doing, and that I had no business to shield him, and all went smooth enough till the day I was too sick to get down to the office, and two of the books were at home.  Then Mr. Surrey discovered the whole thing.  There was a great row, it seems; and Mr. Surrey examined the books, and found, as he was pleased to say, that I’d kept them in first-rate style; so he dismissed Mr. Snipe on the spot, with six months’ pay,—­for you know he never does anything by halves,—­and put me in his place.