Dred, who had been out all the night before, was now lying on the ground on the shady side of the clearing, with an old, much-worn, much-thumbed copy of the Bible by his side. It was the Bible of Denmark Vesey, and in many a secret meeting its wild, inspiring poetry had sounded like a trumpet in his youthful ear.
He lay with his elbow resting on the ground, his hands supporting his massive head, and his large, gloomy, dark eyes fixed in reverie on the moving tree-tops as they waved in the golden blue. Now his eye followed sailing islands of white cloud, drifting to and fro above them. There were elements in him which might, under other circumstances, have made him a poet.
His frame, capacious and energetic as it was, had yet that keenness of excitability which places the soul en rapport with all the great forces of nature. The only book which he had been much in the habit of reading—the book, in fact, which had been the nurse and forming power of his soul—was the Bible, distinguished above all other literature for its intense sympathy with nature. Dred, indeed, resembled in organization and tone of mind some of those men of old who were dwellers in the wilderness, and drew their inspirations from the desert.
It is remarkable that, in all ages, communities and individuals who have suffered under oppression have always fled for refuge to the Old Testament, and to the book of Revelation in the New. Even if not definitely understood, these magnificent compositions have a wild, inspiring power, like a wordless yet impassioned symphony played by a sublime orchestra, in which deep and awful sub-bass instruments mingle with those of ethereal softness, and wild minors twine and interlace with marches of battles and bursts of victorious harmony.
They are much mistaken who say that nothing is efficient as a motive that is not definitely understood. Who ever thought of understanding the mingled wail and roar of the Marseillaise? Just this kind of indefinite stimulating power has the Bible to the souls of the oppressed. There is also a disposition, which has manifested itself since the primitive times, by which the human soul, bowed down beneath the weight of mighty oppressions, and despairing, in its own weakness, seizes with avidity the intimations of a coming judgment, in which the Son of Man, appearing in his glory, and all his holy angels with him, shall right earth's mighty wrongs.
In Dred's mind this thought had acquired an absolute ascendency. All things in nature and in revelation he interpreted by this key.
During the prevalence of the cholera, he had been pervaded by a wild and solemn excitement. To him it was the opening of a seal—the sounding of the trumpet of the first angel. And other woes were yet to come.
He was not a man of personal malignity to any human being. When he contemplated schemes of insurrection and bloodshed, he contemplated them with the calm, immovable firmness of one who felt himself an instrument of doom in a mightier hand. In fact, although seldom called into exercise by the incidents of his wild and solitary life, there was in him a vein of that gentleness which softens the heart towards children and the inferior animals. The amusement of his vacant hours was sometimes to exercise his peculiar gifts over the animal creation, by drawing towards him the birds and squirrels from the coverts of the forest, and giving them food. Indeed, he commonly carried corn in the hunting-dress which he wore, to use for this purpose. Just at this moment, as he lay absorbed in reverie, he heard Teddy, who was near him, calling to his sister,—
"Oh, Fanny, do come and see this squirrel, he is so pretty!"
Fanny came running, eagerly. "Where is he?" she said.