“Done gone, Mars’ John, now,”—­leaving it, and beginning to replenish the fire.

“That’s right, Ben.  We’ll start in the morning.  That sentry at two o’clock sleeps regularly.”

Ben chuckled, heaping up the sticks.

“Go on down to the camp, as usual.  At two, Ben, remember!  We will be free to-night, old boy!”

The black face looked up from the clogging smoke with a curious stare.

“Ki! we’ll be free to-night, Mars’!”—­gulping his breath.

Soon after, the sentry unlocked the gate, and he shambled off out into the night.  Lamar, left alone, went closer to the fire, and worked busily at some papers he drew from his pocket:  maps and schedules.  He intended to write until two o’clock; but the blaze dying down, he wrapped his blanket about him, and lay down on the heaped straw, going on sleepily, in his brain, with his calculations.

The negro, in the shadow of the shed, watched him.  A vague fear beset him,—­of the vast, white cold,—­the glowering mountains,—­of himself; he clung to the familiar face, like a man drifting out into an unknown sea, clutching some relic of the shore.  When Lamar fell asleep, he wandered uncertainly towards the tents.  The world had grown new, strange; was he Ben, picking cotton in the swamp-edge?—­plunging his fingers with a shudder in the icy drifts.  Down in the glowing torpor of the Santilla flats, where the Lamar plantations lay, Ben had slept off as maddening hunger for life and freedom as this of to-day; but here, with the winter air stinging every nerve to life, with the perpetual mystery of the mountains terrifying his bestial nature down, the strength of the man stood up:  groping, blind, malignant, it may be; but whose fault was that?  He was half-frozen:  the physical pain sharpened the keen doubt conquering his thought.  He sat down in the crusted snow, looking vacantly about him, a man, at last,—­but wakening, like a new-born soul, into a world of unutterable solitude.  Wakened dully, slowly; sitting there far into the night, pondering stupidly on his old life; crushing down and out the old parasite affection for his master, the old fears, the old weight threatening to press out his thin life; the muddy blood heating, firing with the same heroic dream that bade Tell and Garibaldi lift up their hands to God, and cry aloud that they were men and free:  the same,—­God-given, burning in the imbruted veins of a Guinea slave.  To what end?  May God be merciful to America while she answers the question!  He sat, rubbing his cracked, bleeding feet, glancing stealthily at the southern hills.  Beyond them lay all that was past; in an hour he would follow Lamar back to—­what?  He lifted his hands up to the sky, in his silly way sobbing hot tears.  “Gor-a’mighty, Mars’ Lord, I’se tired,” was all the prayer he made.  The pale purple mist was gone from the North; the ridge behind which love, freedom waited, struck black across the sky, a wall of iron.  He looked at it drearily.  Utterly alone:  he had always been alone.  He got up at last, with a sigh.