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.
CHAPTER XIII—DICK
WHEN Charlie Gaston reached his home after a never-to-be-forgotten day in the woods with the Preacher, he found a ragged little dirt-smeared negro boy peeping through the fence into the woodyard.
“What you want?” cried Charlie.
“Nuttin!”
“What’s your name?”
“Dick.”