They were all packed. The trunk only required a rope around it, and it was ready for the station. She instructed the expressman to this end, and met him at the depot, where she purchased a ticket for Effingham.
She strolled outside and to a nearby restaurant, where she partook of a hearty breakfast, for she was hungry. She returned to the station, and waited patiently for the arrival of the train from the north, that would take her away from the city where she had been for many months. If it had not fallen to her lot to encounter the man who had known her back in Cincinnati, she could have left the city with friends at the depot, and much more ceremoniously; but she was glad that she was leaving it as it was. When she had awakened the evening before, she had, for a moment, felt that she could not leave it without a terrible pang of conscience.
The train had arrived, and the people were hurrying in that direction. She joined them, and, as she was passing through the gate, she turned for a moment, and looked into the face of the man who had sent her away like this. She regarded him without a tremor of fright. At last she didn't care. A moment later she entered the car.
CHAPTER THREE
"They Knew He Had Written the Truth"
"Yes," said the man, "I knew Sidney Wyeth well. He was, in fact, a personal friend of mine; and, let me tell you, Madam, there never was a fellow more interested in the welfare of his people, from a general point of view, than the one you inquire about."
"Indeed!" she echoed, with a pleased smile.
"Yes, Madam, I speak the truth. My name is Jones," he said. "I am the editor of the Reporter, and Mr. Wyeth used to drop into the office here quite often, and talk with me about the condition of our people in the south. He was a conscientious fellow, void of pretense, and with a regard for anyone's point of view. Yes, Wyeth was a fellow who insisted upon calling a spade a spade, not a hoe; but there is an element of people here—or was, rather—before the appearance of an arraignment by Wyeth, who had only contempt for anyone's opinion other than their own. Oh, I'll tell you, Miss, you cannot imagine how this has been worrying me for years. I have been conducting this paper for some time, and have struggled to make it a good sheet; but, of course, we cannot collect from advertising and make our paper pay, as we would like to see it." He paused a moment, and then, making himself more comfortable, he fell into a long conversation, in which, with much fervor, he told Mildred Latham, whom he had observed was a careful and appreciative listener, of the conditions Sidney Wyeth had seen and had written about.
"The papers told about the success of Wilson Jacobs in securing a Y.M.C.A. for the town northwest of here, and God knows how glad I am to see that our people in the south are coming to appreciate a Christian forward movement. We have been, in a way, steering in a direction that got us nowhere, and that was the way Wyeth used to discuss it. We have here, and in the town just mentioned, the worst Negroes under the sun, and yet counted as civilized people. And it seems to have been forgotten or overlooked, that our salvation, in a moral sense, as well as in a practical and progressive, depends first upon our own initiative. I cannot account for the selfishness that has so pervaded the lives of our professional people. Last summer, in a lengthy article, a Mr. B.J. Dickson, editor of the Attalia Independent, scored the physicians of that city for a little incident, that in itself showed a mark of narrowness that few would or could be brought to believe."