"Yes, Sir, and scared myself, too. I am on my way from prayer meeting, and my mind was so occupied that I didn't think of the thicket until I was into it. Going to town? I'll walk a piece with you if you have no objections."
"None at all; be glad to have you. It made you forget your education," said I, as we walked along.
"It did that, Sir. It makes no difference how many colleges a colored man has gone through nor how many books he has read, scare him and he is what the white people call a nigger. My mother used to tell me stories about that place back there, and I can't forget them. But Miss Florence isn't afraid of it, Sir. When a child she often played there alone, after dark, and the Senator would have to go after her. Pardon me, but why did you cry 'No!' so loud in the garden!"
"Why, it must have been when I was reciting something."
He grunted and we strode on in silence until he said: "Mr. Belford, I have heard that there is no moral responsibility among the people that play on the stage—that the winning or losing of love means little to them. Is it true?"
"Washington, I have read of a hundred scandals in the church. Were they true?"
He did not answer at once; he strode for a long time in silence, and then he spoke: "There are bad people everywhere, and some of them carry the outward form of the cross, but it is made of light paper and not of heavy wood. But there are many who carry the true cross. Let us, however, put that aside, for I must turn back when we get to the first gaslight down yonder, and there is something I want to say to you if I can get at it properly."
"Out with it; don't try to lead up to it."
"You are in love with Mrs. Estell," he bluntly said, and I had expected something to the point, but nothing so straightforward and undiplomatic; and I could have knocked him down for his impertinence, but I swallowed my wrath and waited for him to proceed.
"I can see it."