“I’ll never forget you, deacon.”
“Say, I just as well tell you,” whispered the deacon bending close, “we are not going to allow you to stay down South. We’ll be down after you before long—just as well be packing up!”
The Preacher smiled, looked out of the car window, and made no reply.
“Well, good-bye, Doctor, good-bye. God bless you and your work and your people! You’ve brought me a message warm from God’s heart. I’ll never forget it.”
“Good-bye, deacon.”
As the train whirled southward through the rich populous towns and cities of the North, again the sharp contrast with the desolation of his own land cut him like a knife. He thought of Legree and Haley, Perkins and Tim Shelby robbing widows and orphans and sweeping the poverty-stricken Southland with riot, pillage, murder and brigandage, and posing as the representatives of the conscience of the North. And his heart was heavy with sorrow.
On reaching Hambright he was thunderstruck at the news of the sale of Mrs. Gaston’s place and her tragic death.
“Why, my dear, I sent the money to her on the first Monday I spent in Boston!” he declared to his wife.
“It never reached her.”
“Then Dave Haley, the dirty slave driver, has held that letter. I’ll see to this.” He hurried to the postoffice.