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Beginning Data Science
in R 4
Data Analysis, Visualization,
and Modelling for the Data Scientist
Second Edition
Thomas Mailund
Beginning Data Science in R 4: Data Analysis, Visualization, and Modelling for the
Data Scientist
Thomas Mailund
Aarhus, Denmark
Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xxi
iv
Table of Contents
v
Table of Contents
vi
Table of Contents
vii
Table of Contents
Numeric������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 291
Integer��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 291
Complex������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 292
Logical��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 292
Character����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 293
Data Structures������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 294
Vectors��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 294
Matrix���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 296
Lists������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 298
Indexing������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 300
Named Values���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 304
Factors��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 305
Formulas����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 305
Control Structures��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 306
Selection Statements���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 306
Loops����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 307
Functions���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 311
Named Arguments��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 312
Default Parameters�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 313
Return Values���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 314
Lazy Evaluation�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 315
Scoping�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 317
Function Names Are Different from Variable Names����������������������������������������������������������� 322
Recursive Functions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 322
Exercises����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 325
Fibonacci Numbers�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 325
Outer Product���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 325
Linear Time Merge��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 325
Binary Search���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 326
More Sorting������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 326
Selecting the k Smallest Element���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 327
viii
Table of Contents
ix
Table of Contents
NAMESPACE������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 399
R/ and man/������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 400
Checking the Package�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 400
Roxygen������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 401
Documenting Functions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 401
Import and Export���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 402
Package Scope vs. Global Scope����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 404
Internal Functions���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 404
File Load Order�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 404
Adding Data to Your Package���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 405
NULL������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 406
Building an R Package�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 407
Exercises����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 407
Conclusions���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 501
Data Science����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 501
Machine Learning��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 501
Data Analysis���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 502
R Programming������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 502
The End������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 503
Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 505
xiii
About the Author
Thomas Mailund is an associate professor in bioinformatics at Aarhus University,
Denmark. His background is in math and computer science, but for the last decade, his
main focus has been on genetics and evolutionary studies, particularly comparative
genomics, speciation, and gene flow between emerging species.
xv
About the Technical Reviewer
Jon Westfall is an associate professor of psychology at Delta
State University. He has authored Set Up and Manage Your
Virtual Private Server, Practical R 4, Beginning Android
Web Apps Development, Windows Phone 7 Made Simple,
and several works of fiction including One in the Same,
Mandate, and Franklin: The Ghost Who Successfully Evicted
Hipsters from His Home and Other Short Stories. He lives in
Cleveland, Mississippi, with his wife.
xvii
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
CHAPTER XIV.
Mrs. Fielding staggered to her feet. She stood looking at Flower with
a tortured face.
"Ah! even a mother's instinct has played me false in this. I thought, I
hoped—" she cried out, passionately, then checked herself, and the
agony of her face changed to wrath and fury.
Advancing toward the shrinking, terrified girl, she exclaimed,
hoarsely, angrily:
"So I have wasted my love on you—you, my rival's child! She had his
heart and you his face—my false husband's beautiful face! Are you
not afraid that I will strike you dead for having deceived me so
bitterly!"
"I, mamma, I deceive you? Ah, no, no, for I did not know!" Flower
moaned, faintly, and shrinking in terror from the wild-eyed woman
towering over her so fiercely, and who cried out, scornfully, now:
"No, that is true, you did not know what a heritage of shame was
yours, what a cloud hung over your birth—and yet you proved
yourself true to your inherited nature, to your mother's false, light
instincts. You rushed into your sin, into shame—"
"Hush!" Flower cried, indignantly, her face dyed red with shame. She
stood upright, and holding to the arms of the chair to steady her
trembling form, said, eagerly: "I am Laurie Meredith's wife!"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Jewel, with scornful incredulity.
"Ha! ha!" echoed Mrs. Fielding, and there was a sound in her voice
that was terrible to hear—the tones of incipient madness.
There was madness in her eyes, too, so horribly they glittered as she
sprung toward Flower, and all in an instant buried her working white
fingers in the girl's long tresses.
"Daisy Forrest, I shall kill you!" she screamed, with an awful, blood-
curdling laugh; and dragging her victim down upon her knees, she
tried to clasp her fingers around the fair white throat of her hated
rival's child, and strangle her life out.
In another moment murder would have been done, but fortunately
the monomaniac was thwarted in her deadly purpose, for her
maddened shriek had brought the servants rushing to the scene,
and Jewel, who had been silently gloating over the terrible deed,
realized that her plans would be thwarted if this went further, and
her crazed mother murdered poor Flower for her unconscious
transgression.
So with her own white, jeweled hands she assisted the servants in
their efforts to drag Mrs. Fielding away from her victim, succeeding
only just in time, for Flower was discovered unconscious upon the
floor, and some time elapsed before she even breathed again, so
terrible had been the onslaught of her enemy.
But Mrs. Fielding was for the time a raving mad woman. She had to
be bound and locked into a chamber alone while the man-servant
ran all the way to town to bring a physician.
The remaining servants crowded around Jewel and begged to hear
what had been the cause of the strange scene they had witnessed.
She explained satisfactorily to all, when she replied, angrily:
"My sister had gone astray and disgraced us, and when mamma
found it out quite suddenly just now she went mad with horror, and
would have slain her if your timely entrance had not prevented her
rash deed."
Then she sent them all out, and sat down in the parlor to watch
Flower, who still lay on the floor breathing faintly, but in such a weak
and dazed condition that she realized nothing of what had happened
or of what was going on around her, still less of the baleful black
eyes that watched her so malevolently, as Jewel said to herself:
"My mother is crazed, and the task of punishing this hated girl has
fallen from her hands to mine. Let me think over all the most
horrible things I have ever heard of, and decide what I can do to
make her suffer the longest and worst in return for the torments I
have borne since she took my lover from me. Oh, I hate her as
bitterly as my mother hated her mother, and I swear I will have
vengeance for my wrongs!"
And those beautiful, evilly splendid black eyes, as they floated over
poor Flower's silent, unconscious form, looked baleful enough for
their very glances to kill.
CHAPTER XV.
Presently the house-maid put her head in at the door, giving Jewel a
violent start.
"Has the doctor come?" she asked.
"No, miss; but me and the cook thinks we had better carry Miss
Flower upstairs and put her to bed," Tibbie replied, with a
compassionate look at the silent form upon the floor.
Jewel frowned and considered a moment, then gave her assent to
the plan.
Then she added:
"When you come down, you had better lock the door, as she might
try to run away. In fact, she was about to do so this evening, but
mamma prevented her. Although she has proved so bad, and
disgraced the family, we intend to keep her at home and take care of
her."
The kind-hearted Tibbie murmured an approval of this kindness, and
with the cook's assistance, soon had Flower undressed and placed in
bed. Then seeing that she was still in a dazed and half-unconscious
condition, and either unable or disinclined to speak, they shaded the
lamp and withdrew, locking the door as ordered, and giving the key
to the triumphant Jewel.
In the meantime the physician arrived and pronounced Mrs. Fielding
temporarily insane.
"I will leave soothing medicine for her, and I will send two nurses
from town, for she will have violent paroxysms, and it will take at
least two people to restrain her from doing harm to herself or
others," he said, and took leave, wondering at the coolness and self-
command of this beautiful young girl, whose bright eyes were not
dimmed by a tear, as he explained to her the terrible condition of her
mother.
He would have been more surprised if he could have read the
thoughts of that vindictive heart.
"So she is really insane!" she said to herself. "I am glad of that.
There will be no one now to interfere with my plans for Flower. It is
true she would have killed her if she had been let alone, but I do not
want her to die yet. I want her to live and wither under the shame
of her birth, and under the agony of her desertion by Laurie
Meredith. I will torment her as much as I can until the child is born,
then I hope she will die, and the brat, too, so that when Laurie
Meredith comes back I can have the pleasure of telling him that they
are dead, and showing him their graves."
Her passionate, jealous love for handsome Laurie Meredith was
mixed with hate now, and she delighted in stabbing his heart as he
had stabbed hers when he turned from her dark, dazzling charms to
her sister's fair, angelic beauty.
Going to her room, she unlocked her trunk and took out some
papers, over which she gloated with fierce delight.
"Although I long for power and gold, millions could not buy these
from me, for my sweet revenge is better than gold! Ah, how cleverly
I parted them! They outwitted me when they managed to steal away
and get married, but I've kept them apart ever since, I've made
them pay dearly for their temerity!" she cried, exultantly.
The papers she held were the half-burned diary of Charley Fielding,
the marriage-certificate and card she had stolen from Flower's desk,
and the note she had intercepted on its way to Flower, together with
several letters that Laurie Meredith had written to his wife since his
departure, and which, through Jewel's clever plotting, she had failed
to receive.
She pressed them in her hands, gloating over them with more
delight than a ball-room belle would have done over the most
priceless diamonds, for they represented the power she thirsted for
so ardently—the power to torment those whom she hated.
She cared nothing for the fact, that in spite of all that had come and
gone, poor, unhappy Flower was her half-sister still. She only knew
that ever since the fatal hour when Laurie Meredith had made choice
between them she had hated the blue-eyed, golden-haired beauty
with a jealous fury that was as pitiless as death.
She thought she was a very clever girl, she had managed everything
so adroitly. In the first place, she had bribed Sam to give her
Flower's letter that night, and to take back a reply from herself. She
had found out from that letter that Flower was Laurie Meredith's
wife, that she was going away with him, and that a telegram had
called him away one day sooner, causing him to write to Flower to
come at once to him, as he must be far on his way north before the
next night, which was set as the time for them to leave.
In that sudden emergency Jewel's keen wits served her well. She
remembered that her handwriting was so similar to her sister's that
few could tell them apart, so she decided upon a bold step. She
wrote to Laurie Meredith in his wife's name, declaring that she had
changed her mind about going with him, that she could not bring
herself to leave her mother and sister, but that she would be his true
and faithful wife, and wait for him until he came back from Germany.
The young husband was most bitterly disappointed, but the telegram
that summoned him to a parent's sick-bed admitted of no delay. He
went without Flower, but he wrote to her very soon from his
Northern home, entreating her to reconsider her determination and
join him there.
Jewel had a fervent admirer in the person of the post-office clerk.
By cleverly playing on his vanity she induced him to let her have
Flower's letters, and each one she answered briefly, by denying
Laurie Meredith's wish and indulging in weak regrets over the haste
with which she had wedded him, lamenting lest her mother should
find out her folly and withhold forgiveness.
So it was that not one of those loving letters, for which Flower would
have given her very life, ever reached her, and Jewel sat here
gloating over their possession, while in the very next room poor little
Flower lay upon her sleepless bed, an image of despair, wondering if
it could be true all that Jewel had told her—that she was a child of
shame, her mother a bad, wicked woman, and her father a sinful
wretch who had broken the hearts of both her mother and Jewel's.
CHAPTER XVI.
If any one had told Jewel Fielding that she had the heart of a
murderess, she would have indignantly denied the accusation—she
would have been frightened and angry at the very idea—yet it was
nothing less than a slow murder that she began the next day.
In the first place, she gave out to the servants that Flower was so
ashamed and remorseful over her sin that she wished to keep her
own room all the time, and desired to see no human face save that
of her sister; so, lest any one should enter, she meant to keep her
door locked all the while. Jewel declared that she desired to humor
her sister's whim, and would carry her meals upstairs daily with her
own hands.
Having thus paved the way to carrying the key of Flower's room in
her pocket, and to starving her without being found out, the
vindictive girl went into Flower's room, and surprised her at the task
of plaiting a rope out of her bed-clothes by which to escape through
her window, which was in the second story.
Jewel produced from under her dainty apron a hammer and some
nails, with which she proceeded to nail down the window-sashes
securely.
At first Flower tried to prevent her by holding back her arm; but
Jewel shook her loose with a fierce strength, and, turning, menaced
the white temple with the lifted hammer.
"Dare to hold back my arm again, and I will kill you!" she hissed,
with vindictive rage, while the murderous fire that flashed from her
black eyes appalled Flower's very soul.
With a moan she fell upon the bed, and lay watching Jewel until she
had finished securing the windows.
Then she rose up in bed, and brushing back the wealth of sunny
curls from her aching brow, began to plead pathetically for her
freedom.
"I wish to go away, and you have no right to forbid me," she said at
last, bitterly, resenting the scorn of the other.
Jewel laughed mockingly.
"No right!" she exclaimed. "Ha! ha! Then I will take the right! You
stole Laurie Meredith from me, and now you are going to be
punished for your treachery."
"Punished! As if I had not already suffered enough!" the wretched
girl cried, in pathetic despair.
"You are going to suffer more yet," hissed Jewel, with blazing eyes.
"I am going to keep you locked up here, and allow you nothing but
bread and water, and not enough of that. You shall wish yourself
dead every day, but there will be just enough bread to keep you
alive in misery—no more!"
Flower's beautiful face turned ghastly, her blue eyes stared at the
cruel girl with a dazed, horrified look.
"Oh, Jewel, I wish I were dead already! I have nothing left to live for
now!" she exclaimed. "But, still, would it not be too horrible to
starve me now? It—it would be a double murder, for—for—oh,
Jewel, did you not forget the child?"
The piteous pleading for her unborn child only angered Jewel the
more, and with scornful, cutting phrases she taunted her with her
disgrace and misery, and reiterated her intention of torturing her in
return for what she called her treachery.
When she left the room Flower believed that her fate was sealed.
Jewel had revealed her real self so plainly that she could hope for no
mercy and no pity.
She wept bitterly for the little unborn child, that through Jewel's
cruelty would have to die. She had hoped somehow that she would
find Laurie before it was born, and that all would yet be well. For
surely, surely, he had not deserted her. It was only that some
unfathomable treachery on Jewel's part had kept them asunder. She
did not want to believe him false.
"But I must die, all the same, and he will never know how I suffered
through my love for him," she sighed, day after day, as her strength
waned under the scanty diet of dry bread and stale water served to
her daily by Jewel, with cruel taunts and scornful looks for sauce.
She grew weaker and weaker, great hollows came into her pale
cheeks, her blue eyes looked larger than ever with the purple
shadows beneath them, while the one longing cry of her heart was
always for freedom, freedom, from this dreadful house, through
whose whole extent the maniacal shrieks of the mad Mrs. Fielding
echoed night and day.
After weeks of this terrible life there came a day when the horror-
haunted house became unnaturally still and quiet. Mrs. Fielding had
been removed to an insane asylum, and her wild cries no longer
echoed on the shuddering air.
Jewel knew that at the next meeting of the county court a guardian
must be appointed for herself and her sister until her mother's
recovery, and she resolved to finish her awful work before any
prying, perhaps suspicious stranger should come into the house.
More than eight months had elapsed since Laurie Meredith had gone
away, and Jewel knew that the time of Flower's trouble was near at
hand.
She had been holding back one terrible thing for a coup d'état at the
last, and she decided now that the fitting moment had arrived in
which to startle Flower into a slightly premature illness and thus
make sure of her death at once.
It was a fiend's plan, a fiend's wish, but Jewel never faltered in her
deadly purpose. Her evil passions drove her on to the commission of
a deed that, call it by what specious name she chose in her own
mind, would be no less than murder.
So she went into Flower's room one night carrying a lighted lamp in
one hand and a newspaper in the other.
In this long, weary month she had never permitted Flower the use of
a lamp at night, thinking that the long, interminable hours of
darkness would add to her torture, as indeed they had done most
effectually.
So the poor girl started up from her bed in alarm, dazed by the
brilliant light of the lamp, and filled with a wild hope that Jewel was
about to relent toward her, she exclaimed, wildly:
"Ah, sister, you bring me a light. You begin to relent. Blessings on
you, dear Jewel! Now, give me food, too, I am so hungry, so thirsty,
and the air of this closed room stifles me! Open the window and let
the sweet air of spring come in! Then bring me food, food, for I am
starving."
Jewel set down the lamp and took from her pocket a beautiful, red-
cheeked apple.
"I will give you just one bite of this if you will return it to me when
you have taken it," she said, with a mocking laugh. And Flower
promised; but when she had taken as large a bite as her pearly
teeth could compass, her horrible hunger and thirst overcame her,
and she clung wildly to the luscious fruit, begging, pleading for it,
until Jewel forced it from her after a short, sharp struggle, and
restored it to her pocket.
"You are not half as hungry and thirsty for that delicious fruit as I
was hungry and thirsty for Laurie Meredith's love!" she said, bitterly.
"I loved him with my whole heart, yet you took him from me, and
now you shall suffer for it! Ah, no, Madame Flower, I have not
relented! I am not going to give you any food, nor water, nor fresh
air; and if I brought a light it was only that I might gloat over your
agony when you read something that I came upon accidentally this
evening, and which will add the last drop of bitterness to the
overflowing cup of your misery."
She laughed exultantly, and Flower shrunk back, with her hand
before her eyes to shut out the blaze of those angry eyes that
burned upon her face.
"I—I had better not read it, then. I have borne all that I can bear
already," she moaned, faintly.
Jewel struck the wasted little white hand rudely away from before
Flower's eyes, and said, sharply:
"I thought you would be glad to read this paragraph about Laurie
Meredith. It explains his seeming desertion and falsity to you."
At these words a wild, strangling gasp came from Flower's lips, and
she caught eagerly at the paper, while Jewel, with a plump, jeweled
finger, pointed out a paragraph marked heavily with black ink.
Laurie Meredith's own hand had marked it, and he had sent the
paper to Flower many months ago, little dreaming what a terrible
purpose it was destined to serve.
It was a Boston newspaper, and the paragraph was simply this:
The night grew older, the moon rode high in the heavens, and the
stillness of the midnight hour was broken by the shrill whistle of a
steamer that touched at the wharf a mile below, remained only long
enough to throw out a plank and permit the landing of two
passengers and their baggage, then went on its way majestically.
A newly married widower was bringing home a bride, no less a
personage than Sam, the good-looking mulatto ne'er-do-well. As he
had married from mercenary motives the first time, his second
match was for love alone, and Maria's successor was a colored lady
of as bright a type as himself, young and sprightly, and good-
looking.
She rejoiced in the patronymic of Pocahontas, which was shortened
by general consent of herself and friends to "Poky."
Sam made arrangements for getting his bride's baggage brought up
in the morning, and tucking Poky's hand under his arm, set forth to
tramp the distance that lay between the steamboat wharf and the
humble cabin.
The girl who had lain in the darkness all night, racked by cruel pains,
and praying for death, gave a quick start and held her breath in fear.
She heard loud voices and footsteps in the outer room, and
foreboded that Jewel had tracked her here.
"Oh, Heaven! and I had thought to die alone and in peace,
undisturbed by her jealous, mocking eyes!" she sighed to herself,
despairingly.
She flung herself desperately out of the bed down upon the floor,
crawled under the white valance that hung all around the old-
fashioned bed, and lay there holding her breath in terror, hoping that
she would not be discovered. One hope alone was left her—to die
before those angry eyes of her jealous half-sister shone upon her
again.
In the meantime Sam had lighted a candle, and his wife had helped
herself to a chair, while she gazed around with a critical eye at the
appointments of the room.
It was well furnished indeed, for old Maria had been as thrifty as
Sam was shiftless, and Poky said presently that "arter she had tidied
up ter-morror it would be a very decent sort of a place."
"So I told yer, my lub," replied Sam, affectionately, and he gave the
brown beauty an energetic kiss. Then he said, persuasively, "Poky,
'sposen yer light a fire and let us have a cup of coffee before we go
to bed."
Poky assented good-naturedly, and very soon a fire was crackling in
the little kitchen stove, and the odor of coffee and broiling ham
pervaded the air. Then Poky took from the capacious basket she had
brought on her arm a loaf of bread and a roll of butter, and
proceeded to set the little table for her lord's repast.
It was just as she had finished her thrifty preparations, and invited
Sam to "draw up his cheer," that he gave a startled little cry, and
looked over his shoulder apprehensively:
"Sam!"
"Poky!"
"What's de matter, nigger, lookin' over yo' shoulder like you see
sumfin'? Don't yer go 'magining now dat ole 'oman is ha'ntin' de
house!"
He came closer to his wife and whispered, tremulously:
"Hush, honey; Maria did say as how if de dead could come back she
would, and—and—I heard somefin' sartain—oh, Lord!"
He gave a jump, and so did Poky. Both had heard something this
time—the low wails of a new-born infant proceeding from the next
room.
They held their breath for a minute, then Poky, who was rather
strong-minded, said, contemptuously:
"Cats!"
"Do—do—you think so, Poky?" her better half inquired, dropping his
trembling frame into a chair, and more than half convinced that
Maria was haunting him already.
"Sartain!" said Poky, with a sniff. "Lors, Sam, what a coward you be!
It's only some cats as is got in thrue a open window."
She seized a poker and the candle and disappeared into the
"company room," leaving Sam cowering in the dark, and trembling
lest the shade of his departed Maria should pounce upon him at any
minute and shake him for having presumed to give her a successor.
Then a succession of low wails echoed on the air again, and Sam
shook himself together with returning courage.
"'Twas cats after all! I thought so!" he ejaculated, with a feeble
chuckle. "And, Lordy, but Poky's a-makin' 'em git!"
Apparently it took her some time to disperse the feline intruders, for
fifteen minutes elapsed, and she did not return. Then he attempted
to follow her and got the door slammed in his face with the curt yet
good-naturedly delivered sentence:
"You stay whar you is, nigger!"
He slunk back to his chair, and presently she came out with an
important face, and lighting another candle, placed it on the table,
and told him to eat his supper.
"But, Poky—"
"Yes, it's all right, Sam. 'Twasn't no cats, nor no ghosts, only a
beautiful young gal, Sam, runned away from her friends to-night and
hid herself here for her chile to be borned, which it was dat baby we
heerd a-caterwauling."
"Who is she, Poky?" amazedly.
"She said you'd know—some sort o' name like Flower o' de fiel', or
somethin'. But I mus' go back and tend to her and dat baby. Lucky
for her we cum here dis night. Eat your supper without me, Sam,
'cause I'se needed bad in dere."
She disappeared again, and Sam sat there conscience-stricken,
wondering if his sin that night months ago had brought this thing to
pass.
CHAPTER XIX.
He had known that Laurie Meredith and Flower Fielding were lovers,
and he had guessed that Jewel was jealous, when she bribed him so
heavily to give her that important letter and to take back the answer
she sent. In his eagerness to possess himself of her costly bribe he
had not counted the cost of his treachery to the lovers. Now he
began to experience a sneaking consciousness that his guilt had
somehow helped to pave the way to that trouble in yonder.
He wondered what had become of Laurie Meredith, that his pretty
sweetheart had been forced to seek refuge in a deserted negro
cabin in her sore distress and trouble, and so wondering, he fell
asleep in his chair, and remained there until morning, snoring
profoundly, and oblivious to everything.
When he opened his eyes again the broad sunlight of new day was
shining in through the open door, and the song of birds was in the
air.
Poky's trunk had come up, and she was down on her knees
unpacking it, and softly humming a revival song.
Sam's neck, which had been hanging over on his breast, felt as if it
was half broken. He straightened up and gaped so loudly that his
wife turned around and began to rate him soundly for sleeping in his
chair all night, declaring that she had nearly shaken him to pieces
without being able to rouse him, so had retired, leaving him to the
enjoyment of his arm-chair.
Sam did not doubt the assertion, knowing himself to be a very heavy
sleeper. He sat still a little while collecting his wits, and then said:
"Yes, I remember it all now, Poky. I fell to sleep while you was in de
comp'ny with Miss Flower an' de baby."
"Wha-at?" Poky exclaimed, and he repeated his words, only to be
laughed at by his wife, who declared that he must have been
dreaming, as she did not know what he meant in the least.
In vain did Sam go over the startling events of last night to his
laughing wife. She admitted the cats in the company room, but the
rest of the story she laughed to scorn.
"You fell asleep, you foolish nigger, while I was scatterin' dem tom-
cats off dat shed, and you dreamed all de rest," she said; and to
satisfy his doubts she made him go into the spare room, which he
found neat and tidy, as in Maria's time, the white bed smooth and
unrumpled, the two cane-seated chairs standing rigidly against the
wall, the small looking-glass on the white-draped toilet-table
reflecting his crest-fallen face only, as Poky, standing at the open
door, said, jibingly:
"I hope you'se satisfied now! You don't see any babies nor flowers in
dere, does you?"
The puzzled dreamer shuffled out with rather a sheepish air, and
while he did justice to his morning repast, had to endure a running
fire of commentaries on his dream that drove him at last quite out of
the house, to escape being the butt of Poky's merry malice.
Presently, while he was sulkily smoking his pipe in the front yard,
she came out to him in her check apron, with her sleeves rolled up,
and carrying the broom in her brown, shapely hand. With rather a
sober air, she said:
"I declare, Sam, I was so tickled at yer foolish dream that I forgot to
tell yer what the man said as brought my trunk this mornin'."
"Well?" inquired her sulky spouse.
"Why, it 'pears like a young lady 'bout dis neighborhood drowndid
herself las' night."
"Sho!" exclaimed Sam, wonderingly.
"Yes, siree—drowndid herself on account of trubble an' sickness.
What made it all de worse was dat she was de beautifulest gal in de
country, and had a twin sister ekally beautiful, and dat pore thing is
'most crazy 'bout it all," explained Poky, while Sam eagerly
demanded names.
"Sho! I has such a pore mem'ry fer names," Poky began, reflectively;
then she stuttered: "Ju—Ju—Jule—"
"Jewel and Flower!" shouted Sam, and her eyes beamed with
delight.
"Dat's dem! and 'twas de las' one—dat Flower—dat got up outen her
sick-bed and runned away las' night, and Jule she said shorely she
done drowndid herself, 'cause how she done said she would do it de
first chance, and she was so weak she couldn't a' walked no furder
than down to de sea-shore."
"Golly! I mus' go up to de big house and hear 'bout it," Sam
exclaimed, darting toward the gate, while Poky called after him,
jibingly:
"Sam, don't go and tell anybody 'bout yer foolish dreams las' night."
CHAPTER XX.
In the golden days of June, more than three months after the
occurrences of our last chapter, Laurie Meredith returned to the
scene of his love affair, and made his way to the large stone house
where the Fieldings had lived last summer.
He had not had a letter from Flower for the last two months, and
this had brought him to seek her earlier than he otherwise would
have done, for while he had received her letters he had known that
she was well and contented, but her silence filled him with such fear
and discontent that he left Germany, determined to have it out with
the Fieldings and take his bride away.
No rumor of the changes that had taken place since his departure
had reached him. He knew not that Mrs. Fielding was the inmate of
a lunatic asylum, and Flower reported dead. His heart was full of
eager joy as he ran up the steps of the old stone house, expecting in
a very short time to clasp Flower to his yearning heart, and tell her
that she must leave her mother and sister and come with him now,
for he could never be parted from her again.
The parlor window was open, and the notes of the piano,
accompanied by a sweet voice, became audible as he stepped upon
the porch. He stopped a minute to hear, thinking that the musical
voice belonged to Flower. Then he shivered. The voice and the
words were so sad that they struck a chill to his heart.
It was only an old song, heard many a time before, but its plaintive
sadness had never struck him as forcibly as now, when it came
sighing through the lace curtains, and mingling with the summer
breezes: