“At this time the anti-slavery movement was provoking profound thought and feeling in America.  I at once identified myself with it; not because I was connected with the hated and despised race, but because I loathed all forms of tyranny, and fought against them with what measure of strength I possessed.  Doubtless this made me a more conspicuous mark for the shafts of malice and cruelty, and as I could nowhere be hurt as through her, malignity exhausted its devices there.  She was hooted at when she appeared with me on the streets; she was inundated with infamous letters; she was dragged before a court of justice upon the plea that she had defied the law of the state against amalgamation, forbidding the marriage of white and colored; though at the time it was known that she was English, that we were married in England and by English law.  One night, in the midst of the riots which in 1838 disgraced this city, our house was surrounded by a mob, burned over us; and I, with a few faithful friends, barely succeeded in carrying her to a place of safety,—­uncovered, save by her delicate night-robe and a shawl, hastily caught up as we hurried her away.  The yelling fiends, the burning house, the awful horror of fright and danger, the shock to her health and strength, the storm,—­for the night was a wild and tempestuous one, which drenched her to the skin,—­from all these she might have recovered, had not her boy, her first-born, been carried into her, bruised and dead,—­dead, through an accident of burning rafters and falling stones; an accident, they said; yet as really murdered as though they had wilfully and brutally stricken him down.

“After that I saw that she, too, would die, were she not taken back to our old home.  The preparations were hastily made; we turned our faces towards England; we hoped to reach it at least before another pair of eyes saw the light, but hoped in vain.  There on the broad sea Francesca was born.  There her mother died.  There was she buried.”

It was with extreme difficulty Ercildoune had controlled his face and voice, through the last of this distressing recital, and with the final word he bowed his forehead on the picture-frame,—­convulsed with agony,—­while voiceless sobs, like spasms, shook his form.  Surrey realized that no words were to be said here, and stood by, awed and silent.  What hand, however tender, could be laid on such a wound as this?

Presently he looked up, and continued:  “I came back here, because, I said, here was my place.  I had wealth, education, a thousand advantages which are denied the masses of people who are, like me, of mixed race.  I came here to identify my fate with theirs; to work with and for them; to fight, till I died, against the cruel and merciless prejudice which grinds them down.  I have a son, who has just entered the service of this country, perhaps to die under its flag.  I have a daughter,”—­Willie flushed and started forward;—­“I asked