BY MARIA ROBERTS
People often ask me why I gave up a promising business career and devoted myself to traveling, in which I find no pleasure; exploring, for which I have no taste; and archæology, which is to me the most tiring of pursuits. The question has never been answered, save by the statement that there is no reason to give, which involves the telling of an incredible story.
There are two or three to whom I would like to tell it. If they survive me, they shall know—to that end, these pages.
It is my conviction that whatever intelligent man has known, he has tried to record in some way—that living truths, new to us, may be gleaned from the stone tablets of races extinct for ages. For such a truth, I am searching. One man found it, but he is dead. His spirit I have called up, as the woman at Endor called up Samuel, and questioned it. He told me that the knowledge had sent it to the world of shades before its time, and had put power into the hands of an evil one, who had bidden it never in any place to reveal to any mortal what it knew.
“Even yet I must obey her,” said the spirit of Paul Glen; “but what you seek is written.”
As yet, I have not read. Many strange things have I unearthed, but never this that I seek.
Now, I will write my story. You who read it may believe or not, as you see fit. I know that it is true.
It is many years now since I went South to visit my sister Helen. I had not seen her since the day of her marriage, three years before, till she met me at the door of her own home and welcomed me in her old sweet and quiet manner. It seemed to me, at the first glance, that her face had aged too much, and that a certain once fine expression—a suggestion of latent determination—had overdeveloped, and marked her with stern lines. From the first moment, too, I feared the existence of a trouble in her life, of which her letters had given no hint.
She seemed, though, cheerful enough. She led the way into a great room that was shaded and cool and full of the scent of lilacs. With a motion of her hand, she dismissed three or four black maids, whom she had been assisting or instructing at some sewing work, and they went out, courtesying and showing their white, even teeth at the door.
A fourth did not leave, but retired to a far end of the room and went on with the sewing. I noticed what a tiny garment she was making, and what a sharply cut silhouette her face made against the white curtain of the window by which she sat.
Helen chatted away, apologizing for her husband’s absence, asking a host of questions, and planning some pleasure for every one of the days of my stay with her. I lay back in my chair, with a feeling of languid content, and listened. When Helen suggested sleep and refreshment, I declined both, feeling no need of anything but her presence and that delicious room, the atmosphere of which was laden with rest as with the scent of the lilacs.
The black woman sat directly in the line of my vision, and I remember now that my gaze never strayed from her. I noticed, idly at first, then with interest, the regularity of her features and the grand proportions of her head and bust. Her hair, brownish in color, with dull copper tints, was as straight as my own, and she had a hand and arm so perfectly molded that, except for their black skin, they might have been those of a lady of high degree. But it was the pride, speaking from every line of that dark face, that most attracted my notice. There was in it, too, an exultant sense of power, and it was the most resolute face, black or white, that I ever saw.
Presently I began to feel that it required an effort to keep the thread of what Helen said, and to reply. Her voice seemed to get faint, then to come in snatches, with an indistinct murmur between them; at last, not at all, though I knew she was still speaking.
I was not unconscious, but perception was contracted and concentrated upon one abnormal effort. From me a narrow path of light stretched down the room to the black woman. She seemed to expand and to grow luminous; a vapor exhaled from her, floated to the middle of the pathway, and there assumed her own form, almost nude, perfect like her face in its every line, motionless as if carved from ebony, but with fierce, impure eyes that looked straight into mine and from which there seemed to be no escape.
Their gaze begot an overwhelming sense of disgust. My soul shuddered, but my body could not move. The evil face smiled. A cloud floated over the form of ebony, slowly passed away, revealing one like polished ivory, but the eyes changed not.
How long their gaze held me motionless and helpless I do not know. Suddenly, something white shut out the vision, and my sister’s voice, now harsh and loud, struck upon my hearing like a lash. Instantly the room assumed its ordinary appearance, the scent of the lilacs greeted me as if I had newly come into the atmosphere, and Helen, in her white dress, stood before me, trembling.
The negress at the window looked at us both with insolent amusement. It was to her that Helen spoke.
“How dared you!” she exclaimed; “oh, that I could punish you as you deserve!”
The girl smiled and slowly drew her needle through the cloth in her lap.
“Go out to Lucas,” commanded Helen. “Go!”
The girl drew herself up, and her face took on an expression of sullen defiance. It seemed for an instant that she would not obey. She clenched her hands, and I heard her teeth grate together. But she hesitated only a moment, then went slowly out of the room. Presently she passed by the window, pushing a heavy barrow full of earth. Lucas, the gardener, followed, carrying a long gad. In a minute or two they passed again, going in the same direction, and afterward again and again. The girl was pushing the barrow around and around the house.
“That is the heaviest and most menial employment I can devise for her,” said Helen; “I wish there were something worse. She grows more impudent every day, but this is the first time she has dared to exert her snaky power upon a white person in my presence. How did you feel while you were under that spell?”
“Now, Helen, for heaven’s sake don’t imagine——”
“I imagine nothing,” she interrupted, in a low voice. “I know that girl. She can do strange things. If ever a human creature was possessed of a devil, she is.”
“Why, Helen!”
She went on without heeding my astonishment. “Every negro on the plantation, except Lucas, is mortally afraid of her. My birds cower in a corner of their cage if she approaches them, the gentlest horse we have will rear and kick at sight of her, and if she goes into the poultry-yard the hens cover up their chicks as if night had come. She has affected others as she did you. She has done worse. When I first came here, she was given to me for a maid; but, not liking her, I took a little mulatto girl who was bright and smart then, but who is now idiotic through fear of Asenath.”
I did not think it best to dispute with Helen, knowing her well enough to be sure that any argument I could adduce against her belief she had already weighed and found wanting. She was not a superstitious woman, nor a hasty one, but one whose very mistakes deserved respect, since she always took that course of action which she believed to be wisest and best, even if it were to her own disadvantage. I simply asked: “Why do you not get rid of her?”
“I have tried, but something frustrates every effort of that kind. Robert objects to sale—it is unusual on this plantation. We once offered her her freedom if she would go away; but she only looked as if she scorned the freedom we could give, and laughed in a way that chilled my blood.”
“She seems very insolent.”
“Insolent—that is a weak word! I sometimes think she is birth-marked with impudence as she is with straight hair.”
“That hair, then, is a birth-mark? I thought it must be a wig.”
“She was born with it and with an insane craving to be white. When a child, she used to scream and shriek over her blackness for hours at a time. Mother Glen whipped that out of her.”
“It is a pity she did not whip out some of her other peculiarities.”
“Mother Glen was much to blame for some of them. You knew Paul Glen, and what a strange, silent being he was—always absorbed in some mysterious pursuits, roving from one lost region to another, coming home, now and then, for a day and leaving, as if for a short time, to be heard of after months of inquiry in Hyderabad, or Jerusalem, or the heart of Guinea. Well, after he came home the last time he made Asenath the subject of numerous psychological experiments. He could mesmerize any one—what other gifts he had is not known; but he called mesmerism child’s play. Mother Glen did not object to his making this use of the girl, because she did not wish to cross Paul and have him go away again. It is my belief that Asenath discovered, through some of his experiments, the existence of an occult power in herself. Before long, she had Paul completely under her control. I had not yet come here; but Mother Glen told me about it, and that any effort to break the spell made Paul perfectly furious. He taught her to read, and to sing, and obeyed her in everything—think of it! After a while he fell sick, but it was thought not dangerously. Asenath nursed him, and he would not eat or drink unless she bade him.”
“That, though, may have been a mere whim, such as the sick often take.”
She shook her head. “You have not heard all: Two of the servants—Mammy Clara and Belinda—declare that they overheard Asenath forbid Paul ever to touch food again, and tell him that she would pretend to bid him eat, but he must not do so. And it is certainly true that he at last refused all sustenance and died of starvation.”
“What a horrible idea!”
“Shortly before Paul was stricken down,” Helen proceeded, “he disposed of all his property—it was in securities of various kinds—and we have never been able to find out what he did with the money he received. Thousands and thousands of dollars took wing somehow. It was never brought here, so she could not have stolen it actually, but I am as sure that Asenath knows where that money is as I am that I live.”
“Now, Helen, be sensible, do.”
“Mother Glen was a sensible woman, and she believed as I do. She said the girl was uncanny. Moreover, she declared to me that Asenath had set out to conquer her as she did Paul, and that it was only by constant resistance that she prevented her from gaining her object. There was a psychic contest between them. Mother Glen’s brain was in a condition of siege for months. It could not stand the strain. She was seized with paralysis and died. I blame Asenath for her death.”
I did not say much in reply. My odd experience of a few minutes before puzzled me. Helen’s account of the girl threw a weird light upon what I felt bound, as a reasonable man, to consider merely curious phenomena, subjective in character and due to some unexplained physical cause. I determined to say a few decided words to Robert Glen about the culpability of allowing his delicate wife to contend with such an annoyance as Asenath, who, if not a sorceress, certainly was a fractious and troublesome servant.
“It is strange that Robert does not remove her,” said I.
Helen’s face flushed and was drawn by a momentary spasm. She looked at me in troubled silence, as if she could not decide to speak what she wished to tell me.
“I am afraid for Robert,” she said at length, almost in a whisper; “there is something in that girl’s demeanor to him that it sickens me to think of—and which I dare not try to explain, even to myself. It seems impossible that she can dare to think that he”—she went on hurriedly, after a pause—“you see, he believes in no psychic powers and is not on his guard. He calls her unearthly pranks mere mischief that a few years’ discipline will take out of her. Robert intends her to marry Lucas.”
She spoke the last sentence quite loudly, and, as the girl and her driver were passing by the window, they overheard. Lucas, a squat, stolid-looking mulatto, with a face like that of a satiated animal, chuckled and poked at Asenath with the gad.
The girl stopped. She threw down her burden, flung back her head, and turned upon Helen a wild and vicious stare. Her face, streaming with perspiration, was full of threat. She gasped for breath from emotion or the heaviness of her toil. She raised one hand, wiped her brow with its open palm, and flung the drops of sweat in a shower at Helen.
“May every drop curse you!” she said, between her labored breaths.
Helen looked at her with quiet scorn. “Go on, Lucas,” she said, calmly.
Asenath shook herself, like a chained animal. She ground her teeth and turned upon Lucas in fury, as if she would rend him. He did not quail, but raised his gad threateningly and pointed to the barrow-handles, and, after a momentary struggle with herself, the girl took them up and went on, panting under her toil.
“She shall continue that until she drops,” said my sister.
“But, Helen, that surely is cruel.”
“Not more so than drawing the fangs of a snake. I have discovered that she is psychically powerless when physically exhausted. All the negroes on the place know this and are rejoicing now—they all feel more secure for knowing that she has been disciplined.”
While she was speaking, I saw Robert Glen coming along the walk to the house. Helen saw him, too. Leaning out the window, she called to Lucas and bade him take his charge “to the old barn.” He hurriedly departed, driving the girl—who now seemed doubly unwilling to drag her load—literally like an ox, and very unsparing of the gad.
Robert greeted me cordially; but it was evident to me that there was a cloud between his wife and him. His ruddy face assumed a stern expression when he looked at her, and his voice had a hard tone when he addressed her. Her manner to him had an appealing, almost fawning, air, which it distressed me to see.
It was some days before I found a chance to speak to Robert on the subject of the girl. I had better have held my tongue, for he was nettled in an instant, shrugged his shoulders, and curled his lip.
“You Northern people know nothing whatever about the management of slaves. Helen leads that girl the life of a toad under a harrow, because the other darkies say she ‘hoodoos’ them, and because my mother had some irrational ideas about demoniacal possession. I declare to you, Tom, that if I did not know Helen’s delicate condition and nervousness were much to blame, I should be ashamed of her treatment of Asenath, who is a good house-servant, and valuable.”
“But she is an annoyance that Helen should not have to contend with now.”
“How is she to be got rid of?” he demanded, impatiently. “We never sell any of the people on this estate, and she won’t take her freedom as a gift. I can’t kill her.”
Then I dropped the subject. When I next saw Helen, she had been crying, and she begged me not to speak to Robert about the girl again.
I saw no more of Asenath for some time, and learned that she had been put steadily to work at the loom, the day following my arrival.
One morning, news came that the loom-house had been entered in the night, all the yarn carried off, the woven cloth cut to pieces, and the loom and wheels so shattered that new ones would be necessary. Even the walls of the building were half-destroyed.
“This is some of Asenath’s work,” said Helen.
Robert, who had been annoyed by the news, now seemed additionally so.
“Pshaw, Helen!” he said sharply; “it would take the strength of several men to do some of this mischief.”
“She has it at command. Lucas shall take her in hand again.”
“No, we will have no more of that,” Robert said, sternly. “Now, hear me, Helen; I have told Lucas that if he obeys you in that respect again he shall be flogged within an inch of his life, and I mean it.”
Helen’s face turned very white, her hands fell into her lap, and she sat as if stricken helpless and hopeless. I hastened away to avoid hearing more, comprehending now what the trouble in my sister’s life was, and with a presentiment of coming evil that would be greater.
It was that very night that, having strolled into the shrubbery to smoke my cigar, I fell asleep upon a rustic bench there and awoke to find it was late at night, with the wind moaning as if a storm were brewing in the cloudy heavens.
As I arose to go to the house, something—that was not visible—seemed to come from every quarter at once and smite me. I felt a sharp, electric thrill, which was followed by a sensation as if I had been flung from a height and raised up again, with some of my faculties benumbed by the fall. My hair stood up, but I felt no fear, only a passive wonder, mixed with expectation. Turning, I saw, by a transient gleam of moonlight, the girl Asenath, standing in the path near by, pointing at me with a long, slender rod. The ray passed and left a black Shadow there, which moved slowly away, beckoning to me. I followed.
The Shadow led me out of the shrubbery and along the wide avenue between the two rows of huts occupied by the negroes, and ended at the mansion house. I had no will or thought but to follow it exactly. It stopped before one of the huts and bent itself nearly double. I, too, bent over, involuntarily, and every muscle of my body seemed to become tense. The perspiration started out of me, and my will was like a bar of steel ending in great fingers, which grasped something and pulled upon it with such force that my inner self was a-tremble with weakness when the tension relaxed, which it did at the opening of the cottage door and the coming out of a little lad—a mere child—who looked ghastly, as one of the dead walking. He placed himself beside me, we followed the shadowy woman to another house, dragged at the invisible cords of another human soul, and brought it out into the night. It was a woman, this time, in scantiest of night-robes.
And so we went on, stopping at every door, and from every door some one came forth, except from that of Lucas. There, grasp as it would, the steel fingers clutched nothing, and the door remained shut.
The woman Asenath muttered to herself, and all the crowd of followers muttered, too. With them, my own lips formed words, of which I did not then comprehend the meaning: “Soulless beast!” We went on beyond the quarters, stopped at the mansion, and dragged at something that resisted with all its strength, which was weaker than ours, for it yielded at last, and came slowly, slowly down the steps and stood among us. It was my sister Helen.
Asenath laughed, and ghastly laughter broke from all, even from Helen herself.
I had no feeling of compassion for her, nor of fear for her or myself, but was simply a force which another exerted. The wills of those who followed Asenath were but strands in the cable of her power, and their strength was in her hands for good or ill.
We followed again—out of the plantation, through a forest of pines, over a bridge that spanned slow-crawling, black water, past a fallen church, surrounded by forgotten graves, to the top of a hill where there were stones laid in the form of a serpent—a great cleft stone, like open jaws, forming the head. There Asenath paused and cast down her rod. She stretched out her hands, and in a moment we were formed into a circle about the rod.
And then once again those fingers of steel grasped something—something that all their strength seemed unable to move. Our breath came in gasps, our forms shook like the leaves of the aspen tree, and in the heart was a fear, too great to be measured, of failure. Long, long the effort lasted—lasted until the will seemed to discard its own puerile strength and to fling itself upon the bosom of impersonal force, seize the reservoir of the universal will, and turn its power in a mighty stream upon the burden of one desire—one unyielding demand that the door be opened. And with that borrowed force came the sense of unlimited strength. Faith was born. We stretched out our arms in gestures of which I can only remember that they were first those of invitation, then of welcome. Nature began to pulsate. There was a sound like the slow, regular beating of a heart, in the chambers of which we were inclosed. The inner life throbbed with it so fiercely that the blood seemed almost to leap from my body. All about us were the movements of awakening birds and insects; from afar came the lowing of kine, the crowing of cocks, and the crying of children, as if they were suddenly startled into fear.
In the centre of the circle appeared a square of strange light. We looked upon it and beheld a place of which the darkness and the light of this world are but the envelopes. We saw there, afar off, a vast crystalline globe, from which extended, in all directions, millions of filaments of clear light. The globe scintillated as a diamond does, and its sparks floated away upon the endless filaments of light. Nearer to us, moving about, were beings not human, and not resembling each other further than that they were all gigantic and all possessed of some human attributes. Some were beautiful, some hideous; but upon every one was stamped—in strange characters that I somehow understood—the words “I only am God.” Upon some the writing was fantastic, as if put on in mockery. Upon others it shone with a clear and cruel radiance that pained the sight. Some bore it faded and dim, as if the pretension it set up had fallen like a leaf into the stream of the ages and been almost forgotten. A great awe fell upon us all, so great that all, except the woman Asenath and myself, fell down and seemed as if dead. The woman trembled and murmured to herself, and again my lips formed her words: “Is it worth while, when human desires are so poor, human life so short?”
Through that door there floated not a voice, for the silence was only broken by a faint, soft hum, like very distant music, but an unspoken command that impressed itself upon the spirit.
“Speak!”
Still the woman hesitated. Suddenly her lips moved again, mine following them: “But only through this can he be won.”
“I would have the desire of my heart,” she said aloud.
“It is thine,” was the silent answer; “to him who knocks at this door shall it be opened, and what he asks for there shall he receive, whether for good or ill. It is the law.”
“I would be fair, like those who enslave me. All that she has”—she pointed to my sister—“I would take from her and have for my own.”
“The power to obtain thy will is thine, whether thou be of the just or of the unjust. The spirit which commands shall be obeyed. It is the law.”
“And is there a penalty to be paid?”
“Thy act is the seed from which its penalty shall grow.”
The woman sighed.
“What penalty?”
“Thou knowest the law.”
Sighing again, bitterly, Asenath stretched out her hand. The square of light went out. Across the spot where it had been, drifted indistinct forms which passed into invisibility on either side. Under their feet ran a serpent of fire, which leaped at the woman. She grasped it, and it seemed to become the rod she had cast down.
I remembered nothing more until I came slowly to myself, stretched upon the bench in the shrubbery, with the morning sun shining into my face. My limbs were stiff, my head ached, and my heart was heavy with a foreboding of evil. It was impossible for me to decide whether the experience of the night was a dream or a reality, but I was sorely troubled; I could not think of Asenath without a creeping of the flesh.
On approaching the house, I saw Robert standing in the doorway. My first glimpse of him set me to trembling with fear of evil tidings, he looked so agitated and distressed. When he perceived me, he wrung his hands and burst into tears.
“Oh, Tom!” he cried, “Helen is dying. She was taken with convulsions early this morning. She does not know me. The baby was born dead, and Helen can not live. I must lose her! Oh, God, I must lose her!”
He ran through the hall and up the stairs, like a wild man. I followed, but the heaviness of the shock was so great that it was but slowly and with a feeling as if the floor was rising up to my face. Asenath was moving stealthily about the hall. I bade her begone. She looked at me like a startled cat, but did not go. A black girl, coming down the stairs, passed me, and I recognized her as the first of the women who had joined our ghastly crowd the night before. She gazed straight before her, with wide-open, horrified eyes, and her face had the same pinched look the hall mirror had shown me upon my own as I glanced into it involuntarily when passing it. At the top of the stairs, Belinda, Helen’s poor little maid, flung herself at my feet and clasped my knees.
“Oh, Massa Tom,” she cried, “she am ’witched. Go an’ git d’ witch doctah t’—tak’—de spell off’n her. Nuffin’ll save her ef yo’ don’t do dat.”
As I stopped to put the poor creature aside, old Mammy Clara, her face streaming with tears, came up to me.
“Massa Tom,” she said, solemnly, “de good God hab tooken Miss Helen. She’s in heben wid her li’l’ baby.”
The blow overcame me. It will be best to pass over that time. I shut myself into my room and bore my agony alone. I went once into the room where Helen lay and looked at her face. It was the face of one in peaceful rest, but it had aged twenty years in twelve hours. Her maids, directed by Mrs. Grayson, an old friend of the family, were ready to prepare her for the grave.
“They think,” whispered Mrs. Grayson, “that she had walked in her sleep. Her feet are scratched and torn, as if she had been among briars barefoot, and the doctors say that her convulsions probably came on from the shock of awakening. She was found at daybreak, unconscious, in the hall, and the outer door was wide open.”
I left the plantation a few days after the funeral, and for years neither saw nor heard directly from Robert Glen. I never could forgive his indifference to Helen’s peace of mind while she lived, nor get over a certain disgust with which his lack of self-control at the time of her death inspired me. I never liked him, and, after that sad time, I had less regard for him than ever. I never told him the story I have written. He would only have pronounced me mad, and I did not wish to obtain that reputation for the mere sake of warning him. Besides, I tried with all my mind to believe the experience of that night a dream, but I found that impossible and was always looking for a sequel to it. The sequel came in its appointed time.
Years passed away. At the outbreak of the war, the Graysons came North. From them, I learned that Asenath had disappeared from the plantation long before, and was supposed to have drowned herself in the black creek and to haunt the plantation in the form of a black-and-white snake. Dr. Grayson blamed himself for her death.
“Some of the Glen negroes,” he said, “told some of mine that the girl was turning white, and that, with the exception of her face and hands, her whole body had changed its color. Now I had heard of such cases, but never had seen one, and in spite of what Buffon and other naturalists say on the subject, felt doubtful of the possibility of such a thing taking place. I rode over to Glen’s one day to investigate the matter. Glen was not at home; but, presuming upon old friendship with him, I saw the girl and told her the object of my call. I wish you had seen her; she flew into an outrageous passion, called me vile names, said there was not a white spot on her person, and that if I touched her it should cost me dear. Of course, I paid no attention to her threats, and called that Lucas of Glen’s to help me turn up her sleeves. Her arms really were white, but before I could half-examine them, she broke away from us and tore out of the house. We followed, but lost sight of her in the shrubbery, and to this day she has never been seen again. The negroes say she drowned herself. Glen, when he returned, seemed to believe so. He took me to task in a most ungentlemanly manner for what had happened, and we have not been on speaking terms since. He has now gone abroad to stay until this little war squall blows over, I hear.”
“I trust that he may—and longer,” I said. The doctor chuckled a little and changed the subject. In secret, I said to myself: “I don’t believe the girl is dead, and I do believe that Robert Glen knows where she is. The sequel will come.”
In ’68, Robert returned home, bringing a wife with him. He wrote me a formal announcement of his marriage, to which I replied with equal formality.
It was rumored that the new wife was rich in her own right; that she was of English parentage, but born and reared in Calcutta. Later, I heard that Robert’s old neighbors had not taken to her at all, and that she had an ungovernable temper, being unable to keep any servant under her roof, except a couple of East Indian women, whom she berated continually in their own tongue, but who could not speak English enough to impart any information about their mistress to her neighbors.
The year after Robert’s marriage, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days with the Graysons. Feeling that I owed Robert the courtesy of a call, I rode over to the plantation, not so much to discharge a social duty as to see the new Mrs. Glen, about whom I noticed, on the part of the Graysons, a marked reluctance to speak. They edged away from the subject, when I brought it up, with nervous looks at each other.
Leaving my horse at the outer gate, I walked along the wide avenue nearly to the house. There was a spectral stillness upon the place. Sadness exhaled from everything, to be drawn in with every breath. The old servants were all gone. I had met the once sleek and stolid Lucas, now rheumatic and ragged, begging in the village. Belinda was in the county asylum, and the others were scattered or dead. The scent of the lilacs was gone from the air—the very bushes were rooted up, and lay, sear and dead, by little heaps of earth. A triangle of cloud in the sky cast upon the earth a triangle of shadow, in the midst of which Robert Glen’s home lay as if it were entranced. No sign of happy life met me; but, as I turned aside to look at a certain bench in the shrubbery, a black-and-white snake ran over my foot.
I went no further. A woman was seated upon the bench—a fair woman, with hair like dull copper reflecting sullen fire, with a face and form perfect as those of the goddesses of old, a face which betokened an indomitable soul which knew the secret of the power wielded by the gods. She was bending over her clasped hands, her face was turned aside in an attitude of eager waiting, and wore a smile that transfigured it. Slowly approaching her, walking as a man walks in his sleep, came Robert Glen. He threw himself at her feet and laid his head upon her knee. She bent to him with a little rapturous caress, and both faces were as happy as those of the people in Paradise.
I turned and went away from the place, and entered its precincts no more. From that hour, I was self-devoted to one purpose—to seek the knowledge that should open the door to her degradation and destruction. In the midst of her success, and in the height of her pride, she should turn black as she was in the day when Lucas drove her. I swore it. So should my friend and my sister, whom she robbed and slew, be avenged.