Zoe's Father [pp. 463-468]

ZOE'S FA THER.
and a father like Thaddeus Herrick, with
Hamon for a kind of big brother -"get
nothing for it! Have I not worked for
you ever since father left his old plantation home in the beautiful South-I,
only a child, too? And my father, has
not he worked- is he not working now
for you-where he gets such lots of things
that you sell and use? and-and but
there's something wrong about all this.
I know there is; I have been told so at
school, and the tall teacher has asked
me to come and live with her. She will
teach me many things I ought to know,
and teach me to forget many things I
ought never to have known. All this
she tells me. It is true. God's lightning to-night, in this strange city, reminds me of the old storms on the plantation-and my own mother's face was
so beautiful then as she held me to her
breast and told me of the great God,
who holds us all in the hollow of His
hand and loves good children. I go
from this house, this street; the curse
of God is on it all. The mistress
told me so, and I know it. 0, I have
seen I am going when father comes
home."
A loud knocking at the outer door
here interrupted the girl. She cried out,
"Father at last!" and turned toward
the door. But the obi-woman planted
herself heavily in the way. "Git into
yer room," she thundered, "an' stay
dar till I send for ye heah!'Taint yer
dad. Can't ye heah the strange voices,
ye? It's visitahs, for me," she
added, with a villainous smile.
The girl picked up her bundle with a
weary sigh, and, opening what seemed to be, and was, a mere closet, that
served at once for her own and her
father's room, passed in. The Negress
drew a heavy screen across the closet
door, and then, passing out into the
passage, let in her visitors. They were
two women, almost as fat and ugly as
herself, but attended by a carriage, and
arrayed in costly and gorgeously vulgar
apparel.
"Up to no good, that's sure, them uns
here at this time o' night!" murmured
the passing gray-coated policeman (special officer Horseleech); and he joined
the party. But he walked on immediately; having had an explanatory interview with the three ladies, terminating
in a manner apparently quite satisfactory
to him. Then the two fat visitors, ordering their ill-looking coachman to wait,
followed their black hostess into her
black house; grumbling a little as they
closed their purses with a vicious and
simultaneous snap. Their faces brightened somewhat, however, as they heard
the officer's departing step, and the
cheerful notes of the "Ten Thousand
Miles Away" that he whistled as he
turned the corner, walking northward at
a brisk pace.
CHAPTER III.
Yes, a very cheerful and well-satisfied
officer was Mr. Special Horseleech as he
passed up Dupont Street; and the accursed woman-souls of that San Francisco Rue des Enfers long remembered
the night of the great thunder-storm as
an occasion on which he was especially
gallant, frolicsome, and lenient. Yet he
was just for a moment a little bit put out
when two wretched-looking men, turning into the street at a tremendous pace,
ran against and nearly overturned him;
besides making him drop one of two
gold coins which he was tossing from
one hand to another. Had he not been
too anxious to pick up his coin from the
mud immediately, lest it might be lost,
and had it not taken him some time to
find it, he would have stopped and perhaps arrested the men-one of them
certainly walked as if he were drunk!
"Well, well-we are in a good humor.
Let them go to-night! I've found it."
Swiftly, swiftly, under the rolling thunder-music, passed the two ragged-look
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