"I understand, Don, old boy," he cried, lifting his paw into his lap and slipping his arm around the woolly neck, "you're telling me that you love me always, good or bad, right or wrong. I understand, and it's very sweet to know it. But I've somehow lost the way on life's field, old boy. The night is coming on and I can't find the road home. You remember that feeling when we were lost sometimes in strange countries hunting together, you and I?"

Don licked his hand and wagged his tail again.

He rose and walked through the lawn, radiant now with the glory of spring.

But the flowers had become the emblems of Death not Life and their odor was oppressive.

A little black boy, in a ragged shirt and torn trousers, barefooted and bareheaded, stopped at the gate, climbed up and looked over with idle curiosity at his aimless wandering. He giggled and asked:

"Ye don't need no boy fer nothin, do ye?"

The man's sombre eyes suddenly lighted with a look of hate that faded in a moment and he made no reply. What had this poor little ragam.u.f.fin, his face smeared with dirt and his eyes rolling with childish mirth, to do with tragic problems which his black skin symbolized! He was there because a greedy race of empire builders had need of his labor. He had remained to torment and puzzle and set at naught the wisdom of statesmen for the same reason. For the first time in his life he asked himself a startling question:

"Do I really need him?"

Before the shock that threw his life into ruins he would have answered as every Southerner always answered at that time:

"Certainly I need him. His labor is indispensable to the South."

But to-day, back of the fire that flashed in his eyes, there had been born a new thought. He was destined to forget it in the stress of the life of the future, but it was there growing from day to day. The thought shaped itself into questions:

"Isn't the price we pay too great? Is his labor worth more than the purity of our racial stock? Shall we improve the breed of men or degrade it? Is any progress that degrades the breed of men progress at all? Is it not retrogression? Can we afford it?"

He threw off his train of thought with a gesture of weariness and a great desire suddenly possessed his heart to get rid of such a burden by a complete break with every tie of life save one.

"Why not take the boy and go?" he exclaimed.

The more he turned the idea over in his mind the more clearly it seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

But the fighting instinct within him was too strong for immediate surrender. He went to his office determined to work and lose himself in a return to its old habits.

He sat down at his desk, but his mind was a blank. There wasn't a question on earth that seemed worth writing an editorial about. Nothing mattered.

For two hours he sat hopelessly staring at his exchanges. The same world, which he had left a few weeks before when he had gone down into the valley of the shadows to fight for his life, still rolled on with its endless story of joy and sorrow, ambitions and struggle. It seemed now the record of the buzzing of a lot of insects. It was a waste of time to record such a struggle or to worry one way or another about it. And this effort of a daily newspaper to write the day's history of these insects! It might be worth the while of a philosopher to pause a moment to record the blow that would wipe them out of existence, but to get excited again over their little squabbles--it seemed funny now that he had ever been such a fool!

He rose at last in disgust and seized his hat to go home when the Chairman of the Executive Committee of his party suddenly walked into his office unannounced. His face was wreathed in smiles and his deep ba.s.s voice had a hearty, genuine ring:

"I've big news for you, major!"

The editor placed a chair beside his desk, motioned his visitor to be seated and quietly resumed his seat.

"It's been settled for some time," he went on enthusiastically, "but we thought best not to make the announcement so soon after your wife's death.

I reckon you can guess my secret?"

"I give it up," was the listless answer.

"The Committee has voted unanimously to make you the next Governor. Your nomination with such backing is a mere formality. Your election is a certainty----"

The Chairman sprang to his feet and extended his big hand:

"I salute the Governor of the Commonwealth--the youngest man in the history of the state to hold such high office----"

"You mean it?" Norton asked in a stupor.

"Mean it? Of course I mean it! Why don't you give me your hand? What's the matter?"

"You see, I've sort of lost my bearings in politics lately."

The Chairman's voice was lowered:

"Of course, major, I understand. Well, this is the medicine you need now to brace you up. For the first time in my memory a name will go before our convention without a rival. There'll be just one ballot and that will be a single shout that'll raise the roof----"

Norton rose and walked to his window overlooking the Square, as he was in the habit of doing often, turning his back for a moment on the enthusiastic politician.

He was trying to think. The first big dream of his life had come true and it didn't interest him.

He turned abruptly and faced his visitor:

"Tell your Committee for me," he said with slow emphatic voice, "that I appreciate the high honor they would do me, but cannot accept----"

"What!"

"I cannot accept the responsibility."

"You don't mean it?"

"I was never more in earnest."

The Chairman slipped his arm around the editor with a movement of genuine sympathy:

"Come, my boy, this is nonsense. I'm a veteran politician. No man ever did such a thing as this in the history of the state! You can't decline such an honor. You're only twenty-five years old."

"Time is not measured by the tick of a clock," Norton interrupted, "but by what we've lived."

"Yes, yes, we know you've had a great shock in the death of your wife, but you must remember that the people--a million people--are calling you to lead them. It's a solemn duty. Don't say no now. Take a little time and you'll see that it's the work sent to you at the moment you need it most. I won't take no for an answer----"

He put on his hat and started to the door:

"I'll just report to the Committee that I notified you and that you have the matter under consideration."

Before Norton could enter a protest the politician had gone.

His decision was instantly made. This startling event revealed the hopelessness of life under its present conditions. He would leave the South. He would put a thousand miles between him and the scene of the events of the past year. He would leave his home with its torturing memories.

Above all, he would leave the negroid conditions that made his shame possible and rear his boy in clean air.

CHAPTER XIX