“They have been very unhappy all day—you know the negroes have been surly and revengeful since the election of Governor Houston—they believe they will be put back into slavery and they know that Uncle Bisco voted with his white friends. It is folly, of course—but they beat Captain Roland's old body servant nearly to death because he voted with his old master. And Uncle Bisco has heard threats that he and Aunt Charity will be visited in a like manner. I think it will soon blow over, though at times I confess I am often worried about them, living alone so far off from us, in the cabin in the wood.”
“What was Uncle Bisco's dream?” asked Mrs. Westmore.
“Why, he said an angel had brought him water to drink from a Castellonian Spring. Now, I don't know what a Castellonian Spring is, but that was the word he used, and that he was turned into a live-oak tree, old and moss-grown. Then he stood in the forest surrounded by scrub-oaks and towering over them and other mean trees when suddenly they all fell upon him and cut him down. Now, he says, these scrub-oaks are the radical negroes who wish to kill him for voting with the whites. You will laugh at my interpretation,” she went on. “I told him that the small black oaks were years that still stood around him, but that finally they would overpower him and he would sink to sleep beneath them, as we must all eventually do. I think it reassured him—but, mamma, I am uneasy about the two old people.”
“If the Bishop were here—”
“He would sleep in the house with a shotgun, I fear,” laughed Alice.
They were silent at last: “When did you say Richard was coming again, Alice?”
“To-morrow night—and—and—I hear Clay in his laboratory. I will go and talk to him before bed time.”
She stooped and kissed her mother. To her surprise, she found her mother's arms around her neck and heard her whisper brokenly:
“Alice—Alice—you could solve it all if you would. Think—think—what it would mean to me—to all of us—oh, I can stand this poverty no longer—this fight against that which we cannot overcome.”
She burst into a flood of tears. Never before had Alice seen her show her emotions over their condition, and it hurt her, stabbed her to the vital spot of all obedience and love.