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 out his permission and without legal authority. You shall not enter this house while I live." Giles's voice was very quiet, very even, but it carried the ring of utter and unwavering finality.

A look of bewilderment passed from face to face; that a white man who was not an officer should deliberately lay down his life for a negro was more than these men could comprehend. Before the leader could reply Virginia sprang to Giles's side.

"Oh, please go," she cried. "Please! I am Miss Moultrie, Manning Moultrie's daughter." Her quick eyes picked out some white hairs in the troop. "You all knew Manning Moultrie!"

"And respected him, ma'am," answered one of the older men. "But Manning Moultrie would hev been with us, not against us."

"But you do not understand. This negro is a Haytian; it is the first time that he has been in this country." And in the same disjointed way Virginia poured out the whole tale, as she had heard it from Dessalines. Her words fell upon barren ground. Lack of imagination is the cause of many crises; the men before her were bewildered, not impressed. Failing to grasp the thought which she offered them, they clung stubbornly to their own preformed ideas. The ignorant prefer to follow a blind precept, rather than to strain the faculties of thought.

A silence ominous, ill-boding, followed Virginia's words. The leader, who was such by virtue of the greatest mentality, caught fragments of her argument. Alone he would have yielded; as it was, he felt that to yield would be to be supplanted. He possessed a little mind, 305