He looked up at her.
“It belongs to de church,” he said.
“Belongs to the church!” she said. “Then, why on earth don't they clear away some of those mouldy old apple trees?”
“Huh!” said he, “dey likes it dat way. It be Baptism Hole!”
And so it was, the place used for one of the most important ceremonies of the Baptist church!
They fear still these people, I am afraid, some of them some unknown terrible power.
At Kempshot Pen there is an observatory built by the late Mr Maxwell Hall, who installed there a telescope, because he was an astronomer. Always his daughter used to help her father in his lifetime, and on one occasion there came to her no less a person than the schoolmaster from the nearest village, seeking information about the stars. She gave him a couple of elementary books, and suggested that he should come up some evening and look through the telescope. He came, a black man, immaculately clad in a neat tweed suit, a high starched collar, a silken tie and—a machete was concealed under his arm up his coat.
His hostess was very much astonished, but she said nothing, only suggested he should look at the full moon through the telescope. He assented, spent an instructive evening, and then over rum and water and cake opened his heart.
There were two opinions in the village, he said, and he himself had not known which to believe. One was that the squire opened the roof, and putting up the long tube drew down the stars and examined them, the other that he went up through the tube to the stars and moon! Now he knew.
But, mark you, what a step upward it means that this man should come to enquire, even with a machete under his arm.