considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with
its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. His little
world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. He
recognized the blazing building as his own home!

For a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran
with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. There,
conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a
woman--the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched
full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and
full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away,
and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a
frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles--the work
of a shell.

The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He
uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries--something
between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey--a
startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child
was a deaf mute.

Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the
wreck.




A SON OF THE GODS

A STUDY IN THE PRESENT TENSE