prompt:
Chapter: Miller knocked at the door. There was no response. He went round to the
rear of the house. The dog had slunk behind the woodpile. Miller knocked
again, at the back door, and, receiving no reply, called aloud.

"Mrs. Butler! It is I, Dr. Miller. Is my wife here?"

The slats of a near-by blind opened cautiously.

"Is it really you, Dr. Miller?"

"Yes, Mrs. Butler. I am looking for my wife and child,--are they here?"

"No, sir; she became alarmed about you, soon after the shooting
commenced, and I could not keep her. She left for home half an hour ago.
It is coming on dusk, and she and the child are so near white that she
did not expect to be molested."

"Which way did she go?"

"She meant to go by the main street. She thought it would be less
dangerous than the back streets. I tried to get her to stay here, but
she was frantic about you, and nothing I could say would keep her. Is
the riot almost over, Dr. Miller? Do you think they will murder us all,
and burn down our houses?"

"God knows," replied Miller, with a groan. "But I must find her, if I
lose my own life in the attempt."

Surely, he thought, Janet would be safe. The white people of Wellington
were not savages; or at least their temporary reversion to savagery
would not go as far as to include violence to delicate women and
children. Then there flashed into his mind Josh Green's story of his
"silly" mother, who for twenty years had walked the earth as a child, as
the result of one night's terror, and his heart sank within him.

Miller realized that his buggy, by attracting attention, had been a
hindrance rather than a help in his progress across the city. In order
to follow his wife, he must practically retrace his steps over the very
route he had come. Night was falling. It would be easier to cross the
town on foot. In the dusk his own color, slight in the daytime, would
not attract attention, and by dodging in the shadows he might avoid
those who might wish to intercept him. But he must reach Janet and the
boy at any risk. He had not been willing to throw his life away
hopelessly, but he would cheerfully have sacrificed it for those whom he
loved.

He had gone but a short distance, and had not yet reached the centre of
mob activity, when he intercepted a band of negro laborers from the
cotton compress, with big Josh Green at their head.

"Hello, doctuh!" cried Josh, "does you wan' ter jine us?"

"I'm looking for my wife and child, Josh. They're somewhere in this
den of murderers. Have any of you seen them?"

No one had seen them.

"You men are running a great risk," said Miller. "You are rushing on to
certain death."

"Well, suh, maybe we is; but we're gwine ter die fightin'. Dey say de
w'ite folks is gwine ter bu'n all de cullud schools an' chu'ches, an'
kill all de niggers dey kin ketch. Dey're gwine ter bu'n yo' new
hospittle, ef somebody don' stop 'em."

"Josh--men--you are throwing your lives away. It is a fever; it will
wear off to-morrow, or to-night. They'll not burn the schoolhouses, nor
the hospital--they are not such fools, for they benefit the community;
and they'll only kill the colored people who resist them. Every one of
you with a gun or a pistol carries his death warrant in his own hand.
I'd rather see the hospital burn than have one of you lose his life.
Resistance only makes the matter worse,--the odds against you are too
long."

"Things can't be any wuss, doctuh," replied one of the crowd sturdily.
"A gun is mo' dange'ous ter de man in front of it dan ter de man behin'
it. Dey're gwine ter kill us anyhow; an' we're tired,--we read de
newspapers,--an' we're tired er bein' shot down like dogs, widout jedge
er jury. We'd ruther die fightin' dan be stuck like pigs in a pen!"

"God help you!" said Miller. "As for me, I must find my wife and child."

"Good-by, doctuh," cried Josh, brandishing a huge knife. "'Member 'bout
de ole 'oman, ef you lives thoo dis. Don' fergit de headbo'd an' de
footbo'd, an' a silver plate on de coffin, ef dere's money ernuff."

They went their way, and Miller hurried on. They might resist attack; he
thought it extremely unlikely that they would begin it; but he knew
perfectly well that the mere knowledge that some of the negroes
contemplated resistance would only further inflame the infuriated
whites. The colored men might win a momentary victory, though it was
extremely doubtful; and they would as surely reap the harvest later on.
The qualities which in a white man would win the applause of the world
would in a negro be taken as the marks of savagery. So thoroughly
diseased was public opinion in matters of race that the negro who died
for the common rights of humanity might look for no meed of admiration
or glory. At such a time, in the white man's eyes, a negro's courage
would be mere desperation; his love of liberty, a mere animal dislike of
restraint. Every finer human instinct would be interpreted in terms of
savagery. Or, if forced to admire, they would none the less repress.
They would applaud his courage while they stretched his neck, or carried
off the fragments of his mangled body as souvenirs, in much the same way
that savages preserve the scalps or eat the hearts of their enemies.

But concern for the fate of Josh and his friends occupied only a
secondary place in Miller's mind for the moment. His wife and child were
somewhere ahead of him. He pushed on. He had covered about a quarter of
a mile more, and far down the street could see the signs of greater
animation, when he came upon the body of a woman lying upon the
sidewalk. In the dusk he had almost stumbled over it, and his heart came
up in his mouth. A second glance revealed that it could not be his wife.
It was a fearful portent, however, of what her fate might be. The "war"
had reached the women and children. Yielding to a professional instinct,
he stooped, and saw that the prostrate form was that of old Aunt Jane
Letlow. She was not yet quite dead, and as Miller, with a tender touch,
placed her head in a more comfortable position, her lips moved with a
last lingering flicker of consciousness:--

"Comin', missis, comin'!"

Mammy Jane had gone to join the old mistress upon whose memory her
heart was fixed; and yet not all her reverence for her old mistress, nor
all her deference to the whites, nor all their friendship for her, had
been able to save her from this raging devil of race hatred which
momentarily possessed the town.

Perceiving that he could do no good, Miller hastened onward, sick at
heart. Whenever he saw a party of white men approaching,--these brave
reformers never went singly,--he sought concealment in the shadow of a
tree or the shrubbery in some yard until they had passed. He had covered
about two thirds of the distance homeward, when his eyes fell upon a
group beneath a lamp-post, at sight of which he turned pale with horror,
and rushed forward with a terrible cry.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Miller knocks at the front door, then the back door, and finally summons a frightened Mrs. Butler to the door. She tells him that his wife and child left earlier for home. Miller tries to convince himself that the white people's savagery would not go so far as to harm women and children. As he walks down the street, he meets Josh Green and his "band of negro laborers. Miller warns them again, but Green tells him that they are prepared to die fighting. Miller is concerned for Josh, but knows that in the eye of public opinion, a "negro's courage would be mere desperation; his love of liberty, a mere animal dislike of restraint. Miller continues walking down the street and stumbles upon the body of a woman. He looks down and sees that it is the body of Mammy Jane. He cradles her head and she whispers to her mistress that she is coming before she dies. Miller continues and, suddenly, sees a sight under a lamppost that makes him turn pale with horror


prompt:
Chapter: The proceedings of the day--planned originally as a "demonstration,"
dignified subsequently as a "revolution," under any name the culmination
of the conspiracy formed by Carteret and his colleagues--had by seven
o'clock in the afternoon developed into a murderous riot. Crowds of
white men and half-grown boys, drunk with whiskey or with license, raged
through the streets, beating, chasing, or killing any negro so
unfortunate as to fall into their hands. Why any particular negro was
assailed, no one stopped to inquire; it was merely a white mob thirsting
for black blood, with no more conscience or discrimination than would be
exercised by a wolf in a sheepfold. It was race against race, the whites
against the negroes; and it was a one-sided affair, for until Josh Green
got together his body of armed men, no effective resistance had been
made by any colored person, and the individuals who had been killed had
so far left no marks upon the enemy by which they might be remembered.

"Kill the niggers!" rang out now and then through the dusk, and far down
the street and along the intersecting thoroughfares distant voices took
up the ominous refrain,--"Kill the niggers! Kill the damned niggers!"
Now, not a dark face had been seen on the street for half an hour,
until the group of men headed by Josh made their appearance in the negro
quarter. Armed with guns and axes, they presented quite a formidable
appearance as they made their way toward the new hospital, near which
stood a schoolhouse and a large church, both used by the colored people.
They did not reach their destination without having met a number of
white men, singly or in twos or threes; and the rumor spread with
incredible swiftness that the negroes in turn were up in arms,
determined to massacre all the whites and burn the town. Some of the
whites became alarmed, and recognizing the power of the negroes, if
armed and conscious of their strength, were impressed by the immediate
necessity of overpowering and overawing them. Others, with appetites
already whetted by slaughter, saw a chance, welcome rather than not, of
shedding more black blood. Spontaneously the white mob flocked toward
the hospital, where rumor had it that a large body of desperate negroes,
breathing threats of blood and fire, had taken a determined stand.

It had been Josh's plan merely to remain quietly and peaceably in the
neighborhood of the little group of public institutions, molesting no
one, unless first attacked, and merely letting the white people see that
they meant to protect their own; but so rapidly did the rumor spread,
and so promptly did the white people act, that by the time Josh and his
supporters had reached the top of the rising ground where the hospital
stood, a crowd of white men much more numerous than their own party were
following them at a short distance.

Josh, with the eye of a general, perceived that some of his party were
becoming a little nervous, and decided that they would feel safer behind
shelter.

"I reckon we better go inside de hospittle, boys," he exclaimed. "Den
we'll be behind brick walls, an' dem other fellows 'll be outside, an' ef
dere's any fightin', we'll have de bes' show. We ain' gwine ter do no
shootin' till we're pestered, an' dey'll be less likely ter pester us
ef dey can't git at us widout runnin' some resk. Come along in! Be men!
De gov'ner er de President is gwine ter sen' soldiers ter stop dese
gwines-on, an' meantime we kin keep dem white devils f'm bu'nin' down
our hospittles an' chu'ch-houses. Wen dey comes an' fin's out dat we
jes' means ter pertect ou' prope'ty, dey'll go 'long 'bout deir own
business. Er, ef dey wants a scrap, dey kin have it! Come erlong, boys!"

Jerry Letlow, who had kept out of sight during the day, had started out,
after night had set in, to find Major Carteret. Jerry was very much
afraid. The events of the day had filled him with terror. Whatever the
limitations of Jerry's mind or character may have been, Jerry had a keen
appreciation of the danger to the negroes when they came in conflict
with the whites, and he had no desire to imperil his own skin. He valued
his life for his own sake, and not for any altruistic theory that it
might be of service to others. In other words, Jerry was something of a
coward. He had kept in hiding all day, but finding, toward evening, that
the riot did not abate, and fearing, from the rumors which came to his
ears, that all the negroes would be exterminated, he had set out,
somewhat desperately, to try to find his white patron and protector. He
had been cautious to avoid meeting any white men, and, anticipating no
danger from those of his own race, went toward the party which he saw
approaching, whose path would cross his own. When they were only a few
yards apart, Josh took a step forward and caught Jerry by the arm.

"Come along, Jerry, we need you! Here's another man, boys. Come on now,
and fight fer yo' race!"

In vain Jerry protested. "I don' wan' ter fight," he howled. "De w'ite
folks ain' gwine ter pester me; dey're my frien's. Tu'n me loose,--tu'n
me loose, er we all gwine ter git killed!"

The party paid no attention to Jerry's protestations. Indeed, with the
crowd of whites following behind, they were simply considering the
question of a position from which they could most effectively defend
themselves and the building which they imagined to be threatened. If
Josh had released his grip of Jerry, that worthy could easily have
escaped from the crowd; but Josh maintained his hold almost
mechanically, and, in the confusion, Jerry found himself swept with the
rest into the hospital, the doors of which were promptly barricaded with
the heavier pieces of furniture, and the windows manned by several men
each, Josh, with the instinct of a born commander, posting his forces so
that they could cover with their guns all the approaches to the
building. Jerry still continuing to make himself troublesome, Josh, in a
moment of impatience, gave him a terrific box on the ear, which
stretched him out upon the floor unconscious.

"Shet up," he said; "ef you can't stan' up like a man, keep still, and
don't interfere wid men w'at will fight!" The hospital, when Josh and
his men took possession, had been found deserted. Fortunately there were
no patients for that day, except one or two convalescents, and these,
with the attendants, had joined the exodus of the colored people from
the town.

A white man advanced from the crowd without toward the main entrance to
the hospital. Big Josh, looking out from a window, grasped his gun more
firmly, as his eyes fell upon the man who had murdered his father and
darkened his mother's life. Mechanically he raised his rifle, but
lowered it as the white man lifted up his hand as a sign that he wished
to speak.

"You niggers," called Captain McBane loudly,--it was that worthy,--"you
niggers are courtin' death, an' you won't have to court her but a minute
er two mo' befo' she'll have you. If you surrender and give up your
arms, you'll be dealt with leniently,--you may get off with the
chain-gang or the penitentiary. If you resist, you'll be shot like
dogs."

"Dat's no news, Mr. White Man," replied Josh, appearing boldly at the
window. "We're use' ter bein' treated like dogs by men like you. If you
w'ite people will go 'long an' ten' ter yo' own business an' let us
alone, we'll ten' ter ou'n. You've got guns, an' we've got jest as
much right ter carry 'em as you have. Lay down yo'n, an' we'll lay down
ou'n,--we didn' take 'em up fust; but we ain' gwine ter let you bu'n
down ou' chu'ches an' school'ouses, er dis hospittle, an' we ain' comin'
out er dis house, where we ain' disturbin' nobody, fer you ter shoot us
down er sen' us ter jail. You hear me!"

"All right," responded McBane. "You've had fair warning. Your blood be
on your"--His speech was interrupted by a shot from the crowd, which
splintered the window-casing close to Josh's head. This was followed by
half a dozen other shots, which were replied to, almost simultaneously,
by a volley from within, by which one of the attacking party was killed
and another wounded.

This roused the mob to frenzy.

"Vengeance! vengeance!" they yelled. "Kill the niggers!"

A negro had killed a white man,--the unpardonable sin, admitting neither
excuse, justification, nor extenuation. From time immemorial it had been
bred in the Southern white consciousness, and in the negro consciousness
also, for that matter, that the person of a white man was sacred from
the touch of a negro, no matter what the provocation. A dozen colored
men lay dead in the streets of Wellington, inoffensive people, slain in
cold blood because they had been bold enough to question the authority
of those who had assailed them, or frightened enough to flee when they
had been ordered to stand still; but their lives counted nothing against
that of a riotous white man, who had courted death by attacking a body
of armed men.

The crowd, too, surrounding the hospital, had changed somewhat in
character. The men who had acted as leaders in the early afternoon,
having accomplished their purpose of overturning the local
administration and establishing a provisional government of their own,
had withdrawn from active participation in the rioting, deeming the
negroes already sufficiently overawed to render unlikely any further
trouble from that source. Several of the ringleaders had indeed begun to
exert themselves to prevent further disorder, or any loss of property,
the possibility of which had become apparent; but those who set in
motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards. The
baser element of the white population, recruited from the wharves and
the saloons, was now predominant.

Captain McBane was the only one of the revolutionary committee who had
remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve
order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely
congenial. He had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to
kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the
state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite
for these diversions. We are all puppets in the hands of Fate, and
seldom see the strings that move us. McBane had lived a life of violence
and cruelty. As a man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such
men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not
change their natures until they are converted into dust. One does well
to distrust a tamed tiger.

On the outskirts of the crowd a few of the better class, or at least of
the better clad, were looking on. The double volley described had
already been fired, when the number of these was augmented by the
arrival of Major Carteret and Mr. Ellis, who had just come from the
Chronicle office, where the next day's paper had been in hasty
preparation. They pushed their way towards the front of the crowd.

"This must be stopped, Ellis," said Carteret. "They are burning houses
and killing women and children. Old Jane, good old Mammy Jane, who
nursed my wife at her bosom, and has waited on her and my child within
a few weeks, was killed only a few rods from my house, to which she was
evidently fleeing for protection. It must have been by accident,--I
cannot believe that any white man in town would be dastard enough to
commit such a deed intentionally! I would have defended her with my own
life! We must try to stop this thing!"

"Easier said than done," returned Ellis. "It is in the fever stage, and
must burn itself out. We shall be lucky if it does not burn the town
out. Suppose the negroes should also take a hand at the burning? We have
advised the people to put the negroes down, and they are doing the job
thoroughly."

"My God!" replied the other, with a gesture of impatience, as he
continued to elbow his way through the crowd; "I meant to keep them in
their places,--I did not intend wholesale murder and arson."

Carteret, having reached the front of the mob, made an effort to gain
their attention.

"Gentlemen!" he cried in his loudest tones. His voice, unfortunately,
was neither loud nor piercing.

"Kill the niggers!" clamored the mob.

"Gentlemen, I implore you"--

The crash of a dozen windows, broken by stones and pistol shots, drowned
his voice.

"Gentlemen!" he shouted; "this is murder, it is madness; it is a
disgrace to our city, to our state, to our civilization!"

"That's right!" replied several voices. The mob had recognized the
speaker. "It _is_ a disgrace, and we'll not put up with it a moment
longer. Burn 'em out! Hurrah for Major Carteret, the champion of 'white
supremacy'! Three cheers for the Morning Chronicle and 'no nigger
domination'!"

"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" yelled the crowd.

In vain the baffled orator gesticulated and shrieked in the effort to
correct the misapprehension. Their oracle had spoken; not hearing what
he said, they assumed it to mean encouragement and cooeperation. Their
present course was but the logical outcome of the crusade which the
Morning Chronicle had preached, in season and out of season, for many
months. When Carteret had spoken, and the crowd had cheered him, they
felt that they had done all that courtesy required, and he was
good-naturedly elbowed aside while they proceeded with the work in hand,
which was now to drive out the negroes from the hospital and avenge the
killing of their comrade.

Some brought hay, some kerosene, and others wood from a pile which had
been thrown into a vacant lot near by. Several safe ways of approach to
the building were discovered, and the combustibles placed and fired. The
flames, soon gaining a foothold, leaped upward, catching here and there
at the exposed woodwork, and licking the walls hungrily with long
tongues of flame.

Meanwhile a desultory firing was kept up from the outside, which was
replied to scatteringly from within the hospital. Those inside were
either not good marksmen, or excitement had spoiled their aim. If a face
appeared at a window, a dozen pistol shots from the crowd sought the
spot immediately.

Higher and higher leaped the flames. Suddenly from one of the windows
sprang a black figure, waving a white handkerchief. It was Jerry Letlow.
Regaining consciousness after the effect of Josh's blow had subsided,
Jerry had kept quiet and watched his opportunity. From a safe
vantage-ground he had scanned the crowd without, in search of some
white friend. When he saw Major Carteret moving disconsolately away
after his futile effort to stem the torrent, Jerry made a dash for the
window. He sprang forth, and, waving his handkerchief as a flag of
truce, ran toward Major Carteret, shouting frantically:--

"Majah Carteret--_O_ majah! It's me, suh, Jerry, suh! I didn' go in
dere myse'f, suh--I wuz drag' in dere! I wouldn' do nothin' 'g'inst de
w'ite folks, suh,--no, 'ndeed, I wouldn', suh!"

Jerry's cries were drowned in a roar of rage and a volley of shots from
the mob. Carteret, who had turned away with Ellis, did not even hear his
servant's voice. Jerry's poor flag of truce, his explanations, his
reliance upon his white friends, all failed him in the moment of supreme
need. In that hour, as in any hour when the depths of race hatred are
stirred, a negro was no more than a brute beast, set upon by other brute
beasts whose only instinct was to kill and destroy.

"Let us leave this inferno, Ellis," said Carteret, sick with anger and
disgust. He had just become aware that a negro was being killed, though
he did not know whom. "We can do nothing. The negroes have themselves to
blame,--they tempted us beyond endurance. I counseled firmness, and firm
measures were taken, and our purpose was accomplished. I am not
responsible for these subsequent horrors,--I wash my hands of them. Let
us go!"

The flames gained headway and gradually enveloped the burning building,
until it became evident to those within as well as those without that
the position of the defenders was no longer tenable. Would they die in
the flames, or would they be driven out? The uncertainty soon came to an
end.

The besieged had been willing to fight, so long as there seemed a hope
of successfully defending themselves and their property; for their
purpose was purely one of defense. When they saw the case was hopeless,
inspired by Josh Green's reckless courage, they were still willing to
sell their lives dearly. One or two of them had already been killed, and
as many more disabled. The fate of Jerry Letlow had struck terror to the
hearts of several others, who could scarcely hide their fear. After the
building had been fired, Josh's exhortations were no longer able to keep
them in the hospital. They preferred to fight and be killed in the open,
rather than to be smothered like rats in a hole.

"Boys!" exclaimed Josh,--"men!--fer nobody but men would do w'at you
have done,--the day has gone 'g'inst us. We kin see ou' finish; but fer
my part, I ain' gwine ter leave dis worl' widout takin' a w'ite man
'long wid me, an' I sees my man right out yonder waitin',--I be'n
waitin' fer him twenty years, but he won' have ter wait fer me mo' 'n
'bout twenty seconds. Eve'y one er you pick yo' man! We'll open de do',
an' we'll give some w'ite men a chance ter be sorry dey ever started
dis fuss!"

The door was thrown open suddenly, and through it rushed a dozen or more
black figures, armed with knives, pistols, or clubbed muskets. Taken by
sudden surprise, the white people stood motionless for a moment, but the
approaching negroes had scarcely covered half the distance to which the
heat of the flames had driven back the mob, before they were greeted
with a volley that laid them all low but two. One of these, dazed by
the fate of his companions, turned instinctively to flee, but had
scarcely faced around before he fell, pierced in the back by a dozen
bullets.

Josh Green, the tallest and biggest of them all, had not apparently been
touched. Some of the crowd paused in involuntary admiration of this
black giant, famed on the wharves for his strength, sweeping down upon
them, a smile upon his face, his eyes lit up with a rapt expression
which seemed to take him out of mortal ken. This impression was
heightened by his apparent immunity from the shower of lead which less
susceptible persons had continued to pour at him.

Armed with a huge bowie-knife, a relic of the civil war, which he had
carried on his person for many years for a definite purpose, and which
he had kept sharpened to a razor edge, he reached the line of the crowd.
All but the bravest shrank back. Like a wedge he dashed through the mob,
which parted instinctively before him, and all oblivious of the rain of
lead which fell around him, reached the point where Captain McBane, the
bravest man in the party, stood waiting to meet him. A pistol-flame
flashed in his face, but he went on, and raising his powerful right arm,
buried his knife to the hilt in the heart of his enemy. When the crowd
dashed forward to wreak vengeance on his dead body, they found him with
a smile still upon his face.

One of the two died as the fool dieth. Which was it, or was it both?
"Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and it had not been left to Him.
But they that do violence must expect to suffer violence. McBane's death
was merciful, compared with the nameless horrors he had heaped upon the
hundreds of helpless mortals who had fallen into his hands during his
career as a contractor of convict labor.

Sobered by this culminating tragedy, the mob shortly afterwards
dispersed. The flames soon completed their work, and this handsome
structure, the fruit of old Adam Miller's industry, the monument of his
son's philanthropy, a promise of good things for the future of the city,
lay smouldering in ruins, a melancholy witness to the fact that our
boasted civilization is but a thin veneer, which cracks and scales off
at the first impact of primal passions.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The riot is deemed a "revolution" by the white people, but by seven o'clock it had become a murderous riot. Josh and his group of men make their way to Dr. Miller's hospital with the idea of protecting every important negro institution that they could. The white mobs hear that there is a band of black men preparing to attack and so Josh's group makes their way into the hospital to seek safety. As they make their way towards the building, Josh's group meets Jerry who is very much afraid. Josh grabs Jerry, though he protests, and drags him with them. They enter the hospital and barricade themselves in. The mob reaches the hospital and Josh eyes Captain McBane, the man who had killed his father. McBane threatens them all that they will be shot if they continue to resist. Suddenly, a gunshot rings out and the black men in the hospital returns fire. A white man is killed, another is injured, and the mob's fury rises. Outside of the mob, Major Carteret and Mr. Ellis watch the proceedings. Carteret tells Ellis that this must be stopped since women and children were now being killed. Ellis tells him that the mob is now in the fever stage and that it "must burn itself out. Carteret insists that he did not mean for this to happen. He elbows his way through the crowd and makes his way to the front. He tries to make a speech and to tell them all that their actions are a disgrace, but they do not hear him and believe that he is talking about the black men. The mob surges and sets the building on fire. Inside, Josh Green knows that the time has come to fight and die. The door of the hospital is thrown open and the black fighters rush out. Many are shot are killed but Josh Green takes out a huge bowie knife and runs straight for Captain McBane. Josh is shot just as he reaches McBane and plunges his knife into him. Both are dead. One of the two died as the fool dieth. Which was it, or was it both. Shortly, the mob disperses and the hospital burns down


prompt:
Chapter: FIAT JUSTITIA

By the light of the burning building, which illuminated the street for
several blocks, Major Carteret and Ellis made their way rapidly until
they turned into the street where the major lived. Reaching the house,
Carteret tried the door and found it locked. A vigorous ring at the bell
brought no immediate response. Carteret had begun to pound impatiently
upon the door, when it was cautiously opened by Miss Pemberton, who was
pale, and trembled with excitement.

"Where is Olivia?" asked the major.

"She is upstairs, with Dodie and Mrs. Albright's hospital nurse. Dodie
has the croup. Virgie ran away after the riot broke out. Sister Olivia
had sent for Mammy Jane, but she did not come. Mrs. Albright let her
white nurse come over."

"I'll go up at once," said the major anxiously. "Wait for me,
Ellis,--I'll be down in a few minutes."

"Oh, Mr. Ellis," exclaimed Clara, coming toward him with both hands
extended, "can nothing be done to stop this terrible affair?"

"I wish I could do something," he murmured fervently, taking both her
trembling hands in his own broad palms, where they rested with a
surrendering trustfulness which he has never since had occasion to
doubt. "It has gone too far, already, and the end, I fear, is not yet;
but it cannot grow much worse." The editor hurried upstairs. Mrs.
Carteret, wearing a worried and haggard look, met him at the threshold
of the nursery.

"Dodie is ill," she said. "At three o'clock, when the trouble began, I
was over at Mrs. Albright's,--I had left Virgie with the baby. When I
came back, she and all the other servants had gone. They had heard that
the white people were going to kill all the negroes, and fled to seek
safety. I found Dodie lying in a draught, before an open window, gasping
for breath. I ran back to Mrs. Albright's,--I had found her much better
to-day,--and she let her nurse come over. The nurse says that Dodie is
threatened with membranous croup."

"Have you sent for Dr. Price?"

"There was no one to send,--the servants were gone, and the nurse was
afraid to venture out into the street. I telephoned for Dr. Price, and
found that he was out of town; that he had gone up the river this
morning to attend a patient, and would not be back until to-morrow. Mrs.
Price thought that he had anticipated some kind of trouble in the town
to-day, and had preferred to be where he could not be called upon to
assume any responsibility."

"I suppose you tried Dr. Ashe?"

"I could not get him, nor any one else, after that first call. The
telephone service is disorganized on account of the riot. We need
medicine and ice. The drugstores are all closed on account of the riot,
and for the same reason we couldn't get any ice."

Major Carteret stood beside the brass bedstead upon which his child was
lying,--his only child, around whose curly head clustered all his hopes;
upon whom all his life for the past year had been centred. He stooped
over the bed, beside which the nurse had stationed herself. She was
wiping the child's face, which was red and swollen and covered with
moisture, the nostrils working rapidly, and the little patient vainly
endeavoring at intervals to cough up the obstruction to his breathing.

"Is it serious?" he inquired anxiously. He had always thought of the
croup as a childish ailment, that yielded readily to proper treatment;
but the child's evident distress impressed him with sudden fear.

"Dangerous," replied the young woman laconically. "You came none too
soon. If a doctor isn't got at once, the child will die,--and it must
be a good doctor."

"Whom can I call?" he asked. "You know them all, I suppose. Dr. Price,
our family physician, is out of town."

"Dr. Ashe has charge of his cases when he is away," replied the nurse.
"If you can't find him, try Dr. Hooper. The child is growing worse every
minute. On your way back you'd better get some ice, if possible."

The major hastened downstairs.

"Don't wait for me, Ellis," he said. "I shall be needed here for a
while. I'll get to the office as soon as possible. Make up the paper,
and leave another stick out for me to the last minute, but fill it up in
case I'm not on hand by twelve. We must get the paper out early in the
morning."

Nothing but a matter of the most vital importance would have kept Major
Carteret away from his office this night. Upon the presentation to the
outer world of the story of this riot would depend the attitude of the
great civilized public toward the events of the last ten hours. The
Chronicle was the source from which the first word would be expected; it
would give the people of Wellington their cue as to the position which
they must take in regard to this distressful affair, which had so far
transcended in ferocity the most extreme measures which the conspirators
had anticipated. The burden of his own responsibility weighed heavily
upon him, and could not be shaken off; but he must do first the duty
nearest to him,--he must first attend to his child.

Carteret hastened from the house, and traversed rapidly the short
distance to Dr. Ashe's office. Far down the street he could see the glow
of the burning hospital, and he had scarcely left his own house when the
fusillade of shots, fired when the colored men emerged from the burning
building, was audible. Carteret would have hastened back to the scene of
the riot, to see what was now going on, and to make another effort to
stem the tide of bloodshed; but before the dread of losing his child,
all other interests fell into the background. Not all the negroes in
Wellington could weigh in the balance for one instant against the life
of the feeble child now gasping for breath in the house behind him.

Reaching the house, a vigorous ring brought the doctor's wife to the
door.

"Good evening, Mrs. Ashe. Is the doctor at home?"

"No, Major Carteret. He was called to attend Mrs. Wells, who was taken
suddenly ill, as a result of the trouble this afternoon. He will be
there all night, no doubt."

"My child is very ill, and I must find some one."

"Try Dr. Yates. His house is only four doors away."

A ring at Dr. Yates's door brought out a young man.

"Is Dr. Yates in?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can I see him?"

"You might see him, sir, but that would be all. His horse was frightened
by the shooting on the streets, and ran away and threw the doctor, and
broke his right arm. I have just set it; he will not be able to attend
any patients for several weeks. He is old and nervous, and the shock was
great."

"Are you not a physician?" asked Carteret, looking at the young man
keenly. He was a serious, gentlemanly looking young fellow, whose word
might probably be trusted.

"Yes, I am Dr. Evans, Dr. Yates's assistant. I'm really little more
than a student, but I'll do what I can."

"My only child is sick with the croup, and requires immediate
attention."

"I ought to be able to handle a case of the croup," answered Dr. Evans,
"at least in the first stages. I'll go with you, and stay by the child,
and if the case is beyond me, I may keep it in check until another
physician comes."

He stepped back into another room, and returning immediately with his
hat, accompanied Carteret homeward. The riot had subsided; even the glow
from the smouldering hospital was no longer visible. It seemed that the
city, appalled at the tragedy, had suddenly awakened to a sense of its
own crime. Here and there a dark face, emerging cautiously from some
hiding-place, peered from behind fence or tree, but shrank hastily away
at the sight of a white face. The negroes of Wellington, with the
exception of Josh Green and his party, had not behaved bravely on this
critical day in their history; but those who had fought were dead, to
the last man; those who had sought safety in flight or concealment were
alive to tell the tale.

"We pass right by Dr. Thompson's," said Dr. Evans. "If you haven't
spoken to him, it might be well to call him for consultation, in case
the child should be very bad."

"Go on ahead," said Carteret, "and I'll get him."

Evans hastened on, while Carteret sounded the old-fashioned knocker upon
the doctor's door. A gray-haired negro servant, clad in a dress suit and
wearing a white tie, came to the door.

"De doctuh, suh," he replied politely to Carteret's question, "has gone
ter ampitate de ahm er a gent'eman who got one er his bones smashed wid
a pistol bullet in de--fightin' dis atternoon, suh. He's jes' gone, suh,
an' lef' wo'd dat he'd be gone a' hour er mo', suh."

Carteret hastened homeward. He could think of no other available
physician. Perhaps no other would be needed, but if so, he could find
out from Evans whom it was best to call.

When he reached the child's room, the young doctor was bending anxiously
over the little frame. The little lips had become livid, the little
nails, lying against the white sheet, were blue. The child's efforts to
breathe were most distressing, and each gasp cut the father like a
knife. Mrs. Carteret was weeping hysterically. "How is he, doctor?"
asked the major.

"He is very low," replied the young man. "Nothing short of
tracheotomy--an operation to open the windpipe--will relieve him.
Without it, in half or three quarters of an hour he will be unable to
breathe. It is a delicate operation, a mistake in which would be as
fatal as the disease. I have neither the knowledge nor the experience to
attempt it, and your child's life is too valuable for a student to
practice upon. Neither have I the instruments here."

"What shall we do?" demanded Carteret. "We have called all the best
doctors, and none are available."

The young doctor's brow was wrinkled with thought. He knew a doctor who
could perform the operation. He had heard, also, of a certain event at
Carteret's house some months before, when an unwelcome physician had
been excluded from a consultation,--but it was the last chance.

"There is but one other doctor in town who has performed the operation,
so far as I know," he declared, "and that is Dr. Miller. If you can get
him, he can save your child's life."

Carteret hesitated involuntarily. All the incidents, all the arguments,
of the occasion when he had refused to admit the colored doctor to his
house, came up vividly before his memory. He had acted in accordance
with his lifelong beliefs, and had carried his point; but the present
situation was different,--this was a case of imperative necessity, and
every other interest or consideration must give way before the imminence
of his child's peril. That the doctor would refuse the call, he did not
imagine: it would be too great an honor for a negro to decline,--unless
some bitterness might have grown out of the proceedings of the
afternoon. That this doctor was a man of some education he knew; and he
had been told that he was a man of fine feeling,--for a negro,--and
might easily have taken to heart the day's events. Nevertheless, he
could hardly refuse a professional call,--professional ethics would
require him to respond. Carteret had no reason to suppose that Miller
had ever learned of what had occurred at the house during Dr. Burns's
visit to Wellington. The major himself had never mentioned the
controversy, and no doubt the other gentlemen had been equally silent.

"I'll go for him myself," said Dr. Evans, noting Carteret's hesitation
and suspecting its cause. "I can do nothing here alone, for a little
while, and I may be able to bring the doctor back with me. He likes a
difficult operation."

       *       *       *       *       *

It seemed an age ere the young doctor returned, though it was really
only a few minutes. The nurse did what she could to relieve the child's
sufferings, which grew visibly more and more acute. The mother, upon the
other side of the bed, held one of the baby's hands in her own, and
controlled her feelings as best she might. Carteret paced the floor
anxiously, going every few seconds to the head of the stairs to listen
for Evans's footsteps on the piazza without. At last the welcome sound
was audible, and a few strides took him to the door.

"Dr. Miller is at home, sir," reported Evans, as he came in. "He says
that he was called to your house once before, by a third person who
claimed authority to act, and that he was refused admittance. He
declares that he will not consider such a call unless it come from you
personally."

"That is true, quite true," replied Carteret. "His position is a just
one. I will go at once. Will--will--my child live until I can get Miller
here?"

"He can live for half an hour without an operation. Beyond that I could
give you little hope."

Seizing his hat, Carteret dashed out of the yard and ran rapidly to
Miller's house; ordinarily a walk of six or seven minutes, Carteret
covered it in three, and was almost out of breath when he rang the bell
of Miller's front door.

The ring was answered by the doctor in person.

"Dr. Miller, I believe?" asked Carteret.

"Yes, sir."

"I am Major Carteret. My child is seriously ill, and you are the only
available doctor who can perform the necessary operation."

"Ah! You have tried all the others,--and then you come to me!"

"Yes, I do not deny it," admitted the major, biting his lip. He had not
counted on professional jealousy as an obstacle to be met. "But I _have_
come to you, as a physician, to engage your professional services for my
child,--my only child. I have confidence in your skill, or I should not
have come to you. I request--nay, I implore you to lose no more time,
but come with me at once! My child's life is hanging by a thread, and
you can save it!"

"Ah!" replied the other, "as a father whose only child's life is in
danger, you implore me, of all men in the world, to come and save it!"

There was a strained intensity in the doctor's low voice that struck
Carteret, in spite of his own pre-occupation. He thought he heard, too,
from the adjoining room, the sound of some one sobbing softly. There was
some mystery here which he could not fathom unaided.

Miller turned to the door behind him and threw it open. On the white
cover of a low cot lay a childish form in the rigidity of death, and by
it knelt, with her back to the door, a woman whose shoulders were shaken
by the violence of her sobs. Absorbed in her grief, she did not turn, or
give any sign that she had recognized the intrusion.

"There, Major Carteret!" exclaimed Miller, with the tragic eloquence of
despair, "there lies a specimen of your handiwork! There lies _my_ only
child, laid low by a stray bullet in this riot which you and your paper
have fomented; struck down as much by your hand as though you had held
the weapon with which his life was taken!"

"My God!" exclaimed Carteret, struck with horror. "Is the child dead?"

"There he lies," continued the other, "an innocent child,--there he lies
dead, his little life snuffed out like a candle, because you and a
handful of your friends thought you must override the laws and run this
town at any cost!--and there kneels his mother, overcome by grief. We
are alone in the house. It is not safe to leave her unattended. My duty
calls me here, by the side of my dead child and my suffering wife! I
cannot go with you. There is a just God in heaven!--as you have sown, so
may you reap!"

Carteret possessed a narrow, but a logical mind, and except when
confused or blinded by his prejudices, had always tried to be a just
man. In the agony of his own predicament,--in the horror of the
situation at Miller's house,--for a moment the veil of race prejudice
was rent in twain, and he saw things as they were, in their correct
proportions and relations,--saw clearly and convincingly that he had no
standing here, in the presence of death, in the home of this stricken
family. Miller's refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he
could not blame the doctor for his stand. He was indeed conscious of a
certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power
of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his
own wrongs. In Dr. Miller's place he would have done the same thing.
Miller had spoken the truth,--as he had sown, so must he reap! He could
not expect, could not ask, this father to leave his own household at
such a moment.

Pressing his lips together with grim courage, and bowing mechanically,
as though to Fate rather than the physician, Carteret turned and left
the house. At a rapid pace he soon reached home. There was yet a chance
for his child: perhaps some one of the other doctors had come; perhaps,
after all, the disease had taken a favorable turn,--Evans was but a
young doctor, and might have been mistaken. Surely, with doctors all
around him, his child would not be permitted to die for lack of medical
attention! He found the mother, the doctor, and the nurse still grouped,
as he had left them, around the suffering child.

"How is he now?" he asked, in a voice that sounded like a groan.

"No better," replied the doctor; "steadily growing worse. He can go on
probably for twenty minutes longer without an operation."

"Where is the doctor?" demanded Mrs. Carteret, looking eagerly toward
the door. "You should have brought him right upstairs. There's not a
minute to spare! Phil, Phil, our child will die!"

Carteret's heart swelled almost to bursting with an intense pity. Even
his own great sorrow became of secondary importance beside the grief
which his wife must soon feel at the inevitable loss of her only child.
And it was his fault! Would that he could risk his own life to spare her
and to save the child!

Briefly, and as gently as might be, he stated the result of his errand.
The doctor had refused to come, for a good reason. He could not ask him
again.

Young Evans felt the logic of the situation, which Carteret had
explained sufficiently. To the nurse it was even clearer. If she or any
other woman had been in the doctor's place, she would have given the
same answer.

Mrs. Carteret did not stop to reason. In such a crisis a mother's heart
usurps the place of intellect. For her, at that moment, there were but
two facts in all the world. Her child lay dying. There was within the
town, and within reach, a man who could save him. With an agonized cry
she rushed wildly from the room.

Carteret sought to follow her, but she flew down the long stairs like a
wild thing. The least misstep might have precipitated her to the bottom;
but ere Carteret, with a remonstrance on his lips, had scarcely reached
the uppermost step, she had thrown open the front door and fled
precipitately out into the night.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Carteret returns home and finds the door locked. When a servant lets him in, he finds that his child has become sick with the croup and that the situation has become quite severe. Carteret begins questioning whom they contacted about the situation, but Mrs. Carteret and the nurse tells him that no doctor was available and that medicine and ice were not available either because all stores were closed for the riot. Carteret rushes out of the house and knocks on the doors of several of the town's doctors. All are out seeing other patients. At Dr. Yates's house, Carteret meets a young student who offers to treat the baby if he can. When this young doctor, Dr. Evans, finds Dodie, however, he realizes the situation is worse than he suspected. He tells the family that he does not have the expertise or tools to perform a tracheotomy, the only operation that will save the child. Evans tells Carteret that only one other doctor in town can save his child, Dr. Miller. Evans goes to Miller's house to request his services but returns shortly to tell Carteret that Miller would not come without the Major's personal request for he had been turned away at an earlier call. Carteret feels that this is justifiable and rushes out of the house. He arrives at Miller's in only a few minutes and tells Miller that his child is sick and that he requests his services. Miller is furious and opens the door to his house to reveal his wife, kneeling over the rigid dead body of his own son. There lies my only child, laid low by a stray bullet in this riot which you and your paper have fomented; struck down as much by your hand as though you had held the weapon with which his life was taken. Miller refuses to see Carteret's child. Carteret has a brief moment of clarity. In the agony of his own predicament. for a moment the veil of race prejudice was rent in twain, and he saw things as they were, in their correct proportions and relations, -- saw clearly and convincingly that he had no standing here, in the presence of death, in the home of this stricken family. Carteret returns home with the news. All of the others present seem to understand the doctor's position, but Olivia Carteret refuses to accept his answer. She dashes out into the street to go to the doctor


prompt:
Chapter: Miller's doorbell rang loudly, insistently, as though demanding a
response. Absorbed in his own grief, into which he had relapsed upon
Carteret's departure, the sound was an unwelcome intrusion. Surely the
man could not be coming back! If it were some one else--What else might
happen to the doomed town concerned him not. His child was dead,--his
distracted wife could not be left alone.

The doorbell rang--clamorously--appealingly. Through the long hall and
the closed door of the room where he sat, he could hear some one
knocking, and a faint voice calling.

"Open, for God's sake, open!"

It was a woman's voice,--the voice of a woman in distress. Slowly Miller
rose and went to the door, which he opened mechanically.

A lady stood there, so near the image of his own wife, whom he had just
left, that for a moment he was well-nigh startled. A little older,
perhaps, a little fairer of complexion, but with the same form, the same
features, marked by the same wild grief. She wore a loose wrapper, which
clothed her like the drapery of a statue. Her long dark hair, the
counterpart of his wife's, had fallen down, and hung disheveled about
her shoulders. There was blood upon her knuckles, where she had beaten
with them upon the door. "Dr. Miller," she panted, breathless from her
flight and laying her hand upon his arm appealingly,--when he shrank
from the contact she still held it there,--"Dr. Miller, you will come
and save my child? You know what it is to lose a child! I am so sorry
about your little boy! You will come to mine!"

"Your sorrow comes too late, madam," he said harshly. "My child is dead.
I charged your husband with his murder, and he could not deny it. Why
should I save your husband's child?"

"Ah, Dr. Miller!" she cried, with his wife's voice,--she never knew how
much, in that dark hour, she owed to that resemblance--"it is _my_
child, and I have never injured you. It is my child, Dr. Miller, my only
child. I brought it into the world at the risk of my own life! I have
nursed it, I have watched over it, I have prayed for it,--and it now
lies dying! Oh, Dr. Miller, dear Dr. Miller, if you have a heart, come
and save my child!"

"Madam," he answered more gently, moved in spite of himself, "my heart
is broken. My people lie dead upon the streets, at the hands of yours.
The work of my life is in ashes,--and, yonder, stretched out in death,
lies my own child! God! woman, you ask too much of human nature! Love,
duty, sorrow, _justice_, call me here. I cannot go!"

She rose to her full height. "Then you are a murderer," she cried
wildly. "His blood be on your head, and a mother's curse beside!"

The next moment, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she had thrown
herself at his feet,--at the feet of a negro, this proud white
woman,--and was clasping his knees wildly.

"O God!" she prayed, in tones which quivered with anguish, "pardon my
husband's sins, and my own, and move this man's hard heart, by the blood
of thy Son, who died to save us all!"

It was the last appeal of poor humanity. When the pride of intellect and
caste is broken; when we grovel in the dust of humiliation; when
sickness and sorrow come, and the shadow of death falls upon us, and
there is no hope elsewhere,--we turn to God, who sometimes swallows the
insult, and answers the appeal.

Miller raised the lady to her feet. He had been deeply moved,--but he
had been more deeply injured. This was his wife's sister,--ah, yes! but
a sister who had scorned and slighted and ignored the existence of his
wife for all her life. Only Miller, of all the world, could have guessed
what this had meant to Janet, and he had merely divined it through the
clairvoyant sympathy of love. This woman could have no claim upon him
because of this unacknowledged relationship. Yet, after all, she was his
wife's sister, his child's kinswoman. She was a fellow creature, too,
and in distress.

"Rise, madam," he said, with a sudden inspiration, lifting her gently.
"I will listen to you on one condition. My child lies dead in the
adjoining room, his mother by his side. Go in there, and make your
request of her. I will abide by her decision."

The two women stood confronting each other across the body of the dead
child, mute witness of this first meeting between two children of the
same father. Standing thus face to face, each under the stress of the
deepest emotions, the resemblance between them was even more striking
than it had seemed to Miller when he had admitted Mrs. Carteret to the
house. But Death, the great leveler, striking upon the one hand and
threatening upon the other, had wrought a marvelous transformation in
the bearing of the two women. The sad-eyed Janet towered erect, with
menacing aspect, like an avenging goddess. The other, whose pride had
been her life, stood in the attitude of a trembling suppliant.

"_You_ have come here," cried Janet, pointing with a tragic gesture to
the dead child,--"_you_, to gloat over your husband's work. All my life
you have hated and scorned and despised me. Your presence here insults
me and my dead. What are you doing here?"

"Mrs. Miller," returned Mrs. Carteret tremulously, dazed for a moment by
this outburst, and clasping her hands with an imploring gesture, "my
child, my only child, is dying, and your husband alone can save his
life. Ah, let me have my child," she moaned, heart-rendingly. "It is my
only one--my sweet child--my ewe lamb!"

"This was _my_ only child!" replied the other mother; "and yours is no
better to die than mine!"

"You are young," said Mrs. Carteret, "and may yet have many
children,--this is my only hope! If you have a human heart, tell your
husband to come with me. He leaves it to you; he will do as you
command."

"Ah," cried Janet, "I have a human heart, and therefore I will not let
him go. _My_ child is dead--O God, my child, my child!"

She threw herself down by the bedside, sobbing hysterically. The other
woman knelt beside her, and put her arm about her neck. For a moment
Janet, absorbed in her grief, did not repulse her. "Listen," pleaded
Mrs. Carteret. "You will not let my baby die? You are my sister;--the
child is your own near kin!"

"My child was nearer," returned Janet, rising again to her feet and
shaking off the other woman's arm. "He was my son, and I have seen him
die. I have been your sister for twenty-five years, and you have only
now, for the first time, called me so!"

"Listen--sister," returned Mrs. Carteret. Was there no way to move this
woman? Her child lay dying, if he were not dead already. She would tell
everything, and leave the rest to God. If it would save her child, she
would shrink at no sacrifice. Whether the truth would still further
incense Janet, or move her to mercy, she could not tell; she would leave
the issue to God.

"Listen, sister!" she said. "I have a confession to make. You are my
lawful sister. My father was married to your mother. You are entitled to
his name, and to half his estate."

Janet's eyes flashed with bitter scorn.

"And you have robbed me all these years, and now tell me that as a
reason why I should forgive the murder of my child?"

"No, no!" cried the other wildly, fearing the worst. "I have known of it
only a few weeks,--since my Aunt Polly's death. I had not meant to rob
you,--I had meant to make restitution. Sister! for our father's sake,
who did you no wrong, give me my child's life!"

Janet's eyes slowly filled with tears--bitter tears--burning tears. For
a moment even her grief at her child's loss dropped to second place in
her thoughts. This, then, was the recognition for which, all her life,
she had longed in secret. It had come, after many days, and in larger
measure than she had dreamed; but it had come, not with frank kindliness
and sisterly love, but in a storm of blood and tears; not freely given,
from an open heart, but extorted from a reluctant conscience by the
agony of a mother's fears. Janet had obtained her heart's desire, and
now that it was at her lips, found it but apples of Sodom, filled with
dust and ashes!

"Listen!" she cried, dashing her tears aside. "I have but one word for
you,--one last word,--and then I hope never to see your face again! My
mother died of want, and I was brought up by the hand of charity. Now,
when I have married a man who can supply my needs, you offer me back the
money which you and your friends have robbed me of! You imagined that
the shame of being a negro swallowed up every other ignominy,--and in
your eyes I am a negro, though I am your sister, and you are white, and
people have taken me for you on the streets,--and you, therefore, left
me nameless all my life! Now, when an honest man has given me a name of
which I can be proud, you offer me the one of which you robbed me, and
of which I can make no use. For twenty-five years I, poor, despicable
fool, would have kissed your feet for a word, a nod, a smile. Now, when
this tardy recognition comes, for which I have waited so long, it is
tainted with fraud and crime and blood, and I must pay for it with my
child's life!"

"And I must forfeit that of mine, it seems, for withholding it so long,"
sobbed the other, as, tottering, she turned to go. "It is but just."

"Stay--do not go yet!" commanded Janet imperiously, her pride still
keeping back her tears. "I have not done. I throw you back your
father's name, your father's wealth, your sisterly recognition. I want
none of them,--they are bought too dear! ah, God, they are bought too
dear! But that you may know that a woman may be foully wronged, and yet
may have a heart to feel, even for one who has injured her, you may have
your child's life, if my husband can save it! Will," she said, throwing
open the door into the next room, "go with her!"

"God will bless you for a noble woman!" exclaimed Mrs. Carteret. "You do
not mean all the cruel things you have said,--ah, no! I will see you
again, and make you take them back; I cannot thank you now! Oh, doctor,
let us go! I pray God we may not be too late!"

Together they went out into the night. Mrs. Carteret tottered under the
stress of her emotions, and would have fallen, had not Miller caught and
sustained her with his arm until they reached the house, where he turned
over her fainting form to Carteret at the door.

"Is the child still alive?" asked Miller.

"Yes, thank God," answered the father, "but nearly gone."

"Come on up, Dr. Miller," called Evans from the head of the stairs.
"There's time enough, but none to spare."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The doorbell at the Miller residence furiously rings. Miller is in a dazed grief, but rises to answer it. He finds Mrs. Carteret begging him to save her child. Miller tells her that he will not -- "Love, duty, sorrow, justice, call me here. I cannot go. Olivia falls to her knees, begging Miller and praying to God that he would come and save her child. Miller is moved by her prayers and remembers that, though unrecognized, she is his wife's sister. He tells her to rise and to go to Janet. If she allows it, he will go and save her child. Olivia and Janet confront each other. Olivia begs her to allow her husband to come and save her child. Janet refuses the request. Olivia calls her "sister," but Janet rebukes this name saying, "I have been your sister for twenty-five years, and you have only now, for the first time, called me so. Olivia admits that Janet is her lawful sister and that she means to make restitution for robbing her of her father's estate. This is a bitter admission for Janet. She "had obtained her heart's desire, and now that it was at her lips, found it but apples of Sodom, filled with dust and ashes. Janet makes a speech, telling Olivia that her mother had died of want, that she had been raised in poverty, and that now her child had been taken from her, all because of Olivia and her family. Olivia exclaims that she will forfeit her own life and livelihood. Janet tells her that she will not take the wealth and name of Olivia's father, but "that you may know that a woman may be foully wronged, and yet may have a heart to feel, even for one who has injured her, you may have your child's life. She sends her husband to care for the Carteret child. As Dr. Miller enters the house, he asks if the child is still alive. Dr. Evans tells him that he is and says, "There's time enough, but none to spare


prompt:
Chapter: <CHAPTER>
1--A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression

A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight,
and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned
itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud
shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its
floor.

The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with
the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly
marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment
of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was
come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood
distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been
inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to
finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the
firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in
matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an
hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon,
anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the
opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into
darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and
nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at
such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen,
its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding
hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true
tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night
showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be
perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and
hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the
heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it.
And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed
together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other
things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and
listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it
had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises
of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last
crisis--the final overthrow.

It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it
with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of
flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious
only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the
present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a
thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic
in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qualifications which
frequently invest the facade of a prison with far more dignity than is
found in the facade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a
sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are
utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas,
if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of
a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of
surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and
scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which
responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.

Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty
is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a
gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and
closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to
our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually
arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain
will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods
of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest
tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle
gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden
be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand dunes of
Scheveningen.

The most thoroughgoing ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to
wander on Egdon--he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence
when he laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and
beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in
summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety.
Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of
the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at
during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to
reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend.
Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the
hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which
are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight
and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by
scenes like this.

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither
ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame;
but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and
mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long
lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a
lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.

This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday.
Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary
wilderness--"Bruaria." Then follows the length and breadth in leagues;
and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of this
ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of
Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "Turbaria
Bruaria"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating
to the district. "Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of the
same dark sweep of country.

Here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape--far-reaching
proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. The untameable, Ishmaelitish
thing that Egdon now was it always had been. Civilization was its enemy;
and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the
same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the
particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of
satire on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of
modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. We seem to
want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the
earth is so primitive.

To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between
afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the
world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the
whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around
and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars
overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the
irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence
which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is
old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a
year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the
rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained. Those
surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so
flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the exception of
an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred
to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long
continuance--even the trifling irregularities were not caused by
pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of
the last geological change.

The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath,
from one horizon to another. In many portions of its course it overlaid
an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the
Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by. On the evening
under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom
had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath,
the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.

</CHAPTER>

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: We open our tale on a Saturday afternoon in November in a place called Egdon Heath. If you're wondering what the heck Egdon Heath is, don't worry. Hardy proceeds to tell us all about it. In lots of detail. Think Victorian National Geographic. The sun is setting and the heath is getting dark and gloomy. And look, the"face" from the chapter title comes into play: "The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening, it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden the noon, anticipate the frowning of storms intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight " . Hardy describes the heath throughout the remainder of this chapter, which ends up acting a bit like a prologue. The action comes later. The heath is dark and muted and lonely and tragic. It's likened to some sort of prehistoric entity. And still, there's more. Hardy really, really loves his nature descriptions, that's for sure. He really should have been a park ranger on the side. Hardy continues to wax rhapsodic about the heath. So what have we learned about the heath, aside from what it looks like? Well, we learn this: "The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained" .


prompt:
Chapter: <CHAPTER>
2--Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble

Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed as a mountain,
bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a glazed
hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an
anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick,
which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground
with its point at every few inches' interval. One would have said that
he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other.

Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white.
It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark
surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and
bending away on the furthest horizon.

The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract
that he had yet to traverse. At length he discerned, a long distance
in front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and
it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was
journeying. It was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and
it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. Its rate
of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly.

When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in
shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. The driver walked
beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dye of that
tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his
face, and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it
permeated him.

The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cart was a
reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding
for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in
Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during
the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a
curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of
life and those which generally prevail.

The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer,
and wished him good evening. The reddleman turned his head, and replied
in sad and occupied tones. He was young, and his face, if not exactly
handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have
contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour.
His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself
attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He
had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the
lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though,
as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at
their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting
suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen
for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade. It
showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. A certain well-to-do
air about the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree.
The natural query of an observer would have been, Why should such
a promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing exterior by
adopting that singular occupation?

After replying to the old man's greeting he showed no inclination to
continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder
traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds but that of
the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the
crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two
shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals, of a
breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known as "heath-croppers"
here.

Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally left his
companion's side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into its interior
through a small window. The look was always anxious. He would then
return to the old man, who made another remark about the state of the
country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied,
and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence conveyed to
neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers,
after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech;
contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in
cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination,
and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself.

Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, had
it not been for the reddleman's visits to his van. When he returned
from his fifth time of looking in the old man said, "You have something
inside there besides your load?"

"Yes."

"Somebody who wants looking after?"

"Yes."

Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. The reddleman
hastened to the back, looked in, and came away again.

"You have a child there, my man?"

"No, sir, I have a woman."

"The deuce you have! Why did she cry out?"

"Oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling, she's
uneasy, and keeps dreaming."

"A young woman?"

"Yes, a young woman."

"That would have interested me forty years ago. Perhaps she's your
wife?"

"My wife!" said the other bitterly. "She's above mating with such as I.
But there's no reason why I should tell you about that."

"That's true. And there's no reason why you should not. What harm can I
do to you or to her?"

The reddleman looked in the old man's face. "Well, sir," he said at
last, "I knew her before today, though perhaps it would have been better
if I had not. But she's nothing to me, and I am nothing to her; and she
wouldn't have been in my van if any better carriage had been there to
take her."

"Where, may I ask?"

"At Anglebury."

"I know the town well. What was she doing there?"

"Oh, not much--to gossip about. However, she's tired to death now, and
not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless. She dropped off
into a nap about an hour ago, and 'twill do her good."

"A nice-looking girl, no doubt?"

"You would say so."

The other traveller turned his eyes with interest towards the van
window, and, without withdrawing them, said, "I presume I might look in
upon her?"

"No," said the reddleman abruptly. "It is getting too dark for you to
see much of her; and, more than that, I have no right to allow you.
Thank God she sleeps so well, I hope she won't wake till she's home."

"Who is she? One of the neighbourhood?"

"'Tis no matter who, excuse me."

"It is not that girl of Blooms-End, who has been talked about more or
less lately? If so, I know her; and I can guess what has happened."

"'Tis no matter.... Now, sir, I am sorry to say that we shall soon have
to part company. My ponies are tired, and I have further to go, and I am
going to rest them under this bank for an hour."

The elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman
turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, "Good night." The
old man replied, and proceeded on his way as before.

The reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the road
and became absorbed in the thickening films of night. He then took
some hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwing a
portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he
laid on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down, leaning
his back against the wheel. From the interior a low soft breathing came
to his ear. It appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the
scene, as if considering the next step that he should take.

To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to be a
duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for there was that
in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and
halting dubiousness. It was the quality of the repose appertaining
to the scene. This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the
apparent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy life so
nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its
sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to be
exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest,
awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered
by understatement and reserve.

The scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascents
from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. It
embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other, till
all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light sky.
The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally
settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow. This bossy
projection of earth above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground
of the loneliest height that the heath contained. Although from the
vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlantean brow, its actual bulk was
great. It formed the pole and axis of this heathery world.

As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that its summit,
hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, was surmounted
by something higher. It rose from the semiglobular mound like a spike
from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have
been to suppose it the person of one of the Celts who built the barrow,
so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. It seemed a sort
of last man among them, musing for a moment before dropping into eternal
night with the rest of his race.

There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plain
rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose
the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere
than on a celestial globe.

Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give
to the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious
justification of their outline. Without it, there was the dome without
the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were
satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the
upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to unity.
Looking at this or that member of the group was not observing a complete
thing, but a fraction of a thing.

The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless
structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a strange
phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of that whole
which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of immobility in
any quarter suggested confusion.

Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity,
shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if alarmed, it descended on
the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud,
and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more clearly
the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.

The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping
out of sight on the right side, a newcomer, bearing a burden, protruded
into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the
burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth,
and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures.

The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of
silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had
taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither
for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung
by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more
interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing
than these newcomers, and unconsciously regarded them as intruders. But
they remained, and established themselves; and the lonely person who
hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely
to return.

</CHAPTER>

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Some people finally arrive! An old man is walking along a road. Another fellow appears on the scene - it's a guy walking alongside a van and surrounded by a cloud a red dust, like Pig-Pen. This guy is a "reddleman," which is a person who sold red dye to people. Since he works with red dye all the time, the reddleman is stained red and is often socially ostracized because of that. The men walk along the road. Yes, nature is described some more. Finally, the two guys strike up a conversation. There's a girl in the reddleman's van. The reddleman is not her husband, and he's just helping her out of a jam. He refuses to elaborate more than that. The old man, a retired naval officer, is nosey, but doesn't learn any juicy gossip. The old man leaves for his house and we follow the reddleman. The heath used to be a hangout for ancient Celts and there's some cool ruins and a creepy, prehistoric vibe floating around the place. The reddleman sees a mysterious figure on a hill, but it promptly disappears.