"My friends," said father Dickson, "I came here to perform a duty, at the call of my heavenly Master, and you have no right to stop me."
"Well, how will you help yourself, old bird? Supposing we haven't?"
"Remember, my friends, that we shall all stand side by side at the judgment seat to give an account for this night's transactions. How will you answer for it to God?"
A loud, sneering laugh came from the group under the trees, and a voice, which we recognize as Tom Gordon's, calls out,
"He is coming the solemn dodge on you, boys! Get on your long faces!"
"Come," said the roughest of the speakers, "this here don't go down with us! We don't know nothing about no judgments; and as to God, we an't none of us seen him, lately. We 'spect he don't travel round these parts."
"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good," said father Dickson.
Here one of the mob mewed like a cat, another barked like a dog, and the spectators under the tree laughed more loudly than ever.
"I say," said the first speaker, "you shan't go to getting up rat-traps and calling 'em meetings! This yer preaching o' yourn is a cussed sell, and we won't stand it no longer! We shall have an insurrection among our niggers. Pretty business, getting up churches where you won't have slave-holders commune! I's got niggers myself, and I know I's bigger slave than they be, and I wished I was shet of them! But I an't going to have no d——d old parson dictating to me about my affairs! And we won't, none of the rest of us, will we? 'Cause them that an't got any niggers now means to have. Don't we, boys?"