in Him. We can only cry with aching hearts in the language of the Psalmist of old, 'How long, O Lord? how long!'

"The voices of three men now fill the world with their bluster-Charles Sumner, a crack-brained theorist; Thaddeus Stevens, a clubfooted misanthrope, and B. F. Butler, a triumvirate of physical and mental deformity. Yet they are but the cracked reeds of a great organ that peals forth the discord of a nation's blind rage. When the storm is past, and reason rules passion, they will be flung into oblivion. We must bend to the storm. It is God's will."

The people left the church with heavy hearts. They were hopelessly depressed. In the afternoon, as the churches were being slowly emptied, groups of negroes stood on the corners talking loudly and discussing the meaning of this new Sunday so strangely observed. It began to snow. It was late in March and this was an unusual phenomenon in the South.

The next morning the earth was covered with four inches of snow, that glistened in the sun with a strange reddish hue. On examination it was found that every snow drop had in it a tiny red spot that looked like a drop of blood! Nothing of the kind had ever been seen before in the history of the world, so far as any one knew.

This freak of nature seemed a harbinger of sure and terrible calamity. Even the most cultured and thoughtful could not shake off the impression it made.

The Preacher did his best to cheer the people in his daily intercourse with them. His Sunday sermons seemed in these darkest days unusually tender and hopeful. It was a marvel to those who heard his bitter and sorrowful speech on the day of fasting and prayer, that he could preach such sermons as those which followed.

Occasionally old Uncle Joshua Miller would ask him to preach for the negroes in their new church on Sunday afternoons. He always went, hoping to keep some sort of helpful influence over them in spite of their new leaders and teachers. It was strange to watch this man shake hands with these negroes, call them familiarly by their names, ask kindly after their families, and yet carry in his heart the presage of a coming irreconcilable conflict. For no one knew more clearly than he, that the issues were being joined from the deadly grip of that conflict of races that would determine whether this Republic would be Mulatto or Anglo-Saxon. Yet at heart he had only the kindliest feelings for these familiar dusky faces now rising a black storm above the horizon, threatening the existence of civilised society, under the leadership of Simon Legree, and Mr. Stevens.

It seemed a joke sometimes as he thought of it, a huge, preposterous joke, this actual attempt to reverse the order of nature, turn society upside down, and make a thicklipped, flat-nosed negro but yesterday taken from the jungle, the ruler of the proudest and strongest race of men evolved in two thousand years of history. Yet when he remembered the fierce passions in the hearts of the demagogues who were experimenting with this social dynamite, it was a joke that took on a hellish, sinister meaning.

W

CHAPTER XIII

DICK

HEN Charlie Gaston reached his home after a never-to-be-forgotten day in the woods with the Preacher, he found a ragged little dirtsmeared negro boy peeping through the fence into the woodyard.

"What you want?" cried Charlie.

"Haint got none. My mudder say she was tricked, en I'se de trick!" he chuckled and walled his eyes.

Charlie came close and looked him over. Dick giggled and showed the whites of his eyes.

"What made that streak on your neck?"

Low life nigger name er Amos what stays roun' our house Sundays."

66 What made him do it?”

66

He low he wuz me daddy, en I sez he wuz er liar, en den he grab de axe en try ter chop me head off."

"Gracious, he 'most killed you!"

Yassir, but de doctor sewed me head back, en hit grow'd."

"Goodness me!"

"Say!" grinned Dick. "What?"

"I likes you."

"Do you?"

"Yassir, en I aint gwine home no mo'. I done run away, en I wants ter live wid you."

66 Will you help me and Nelse work?”

"Dat I will. I can do mos' anyting. You ax yer Ma fur me, en doan let dat nigger Nelse git holt er me."

Charlie's heart went out to the ragged little waif. He took him by the hand, led him into the yard, found his mother, and begged her to give him a place to sleep and keep him.

His mother tried to persuade him to make Dick go back to his own home. Nelse was loud in his objections to the new comer, and Aunt Eve looked at him as though she would throw him over the fence.

But Dick stuck doggedly to Charlie's heels.

"Mama dear, see, they tried to cut his head off with an axe," cried the boy, and he wheeled Dick around and showed the terrible scar across the back of his neck.

"I spec hits er pity dey didn't cut hit clean off," muttered Nelse.

"Mama, you can't send him back to be killed!"

66

Well, darling, I'll see about it to-morrow." "Come on Dick, I'll show you where to sleep!"

The next day Dick's mother was glad to get rid of him by binding him legally to Mrs. Gaston, and a lonely boy found a playmate and partner in work, he was never to forget.

T

CHAPTER XIV

THE NEGRO UPRISING

A

HE summer of 1867! Will ever a Southern man or woman who saw it forget its scenes? group of oath-bound secret societies, The Union League, The Heroes of America, and The Red Strings dominating society, and marauding bands of negroes armed to the teeth terrorising the country, stealing, burning and murdering.

Labour was not only demoralised, it had ceased to exist Depression was universal, farming paralysed, investments dead, and all property insecure. Moral obligations were dropping away from conduct, and a gulf as deep as hell and high as heaven opening between the two races.

The negro preachers openly instructed their flocks to take what they needed from their white neighbours. If any man dared prosecute a thief, the answer was a burned barn or a home in ashes.

The wildest passions held riot at Washington. The Congress of the United States as a deliberative body under constitutional forms of government no longer existed. The Speaker of the House shook his fist at the President and threatened openly to hang him, and he was arraigned for impeachment for daring to exercise the constitutional functions of his office!

The division agents of the Freedman's Bureau in the South sent to Washington the most alarming reports, declaring a famine imminent. In reply the vindictive leaders levied a tax of fifteen dollars a bale on cotton,