hearted Africans. They took to the Baptist and
Methodist churches as ducks to water. The master made no objection to
the exercise of their right to worship God as their consciences called.
He encouraged their own preachers to hold weekly prayer meetings and
exhort his people in the assembling places of the servants.

Nor did he object to the dance which Sam, who was an Episcopalian,
invariably organized on the nights following prayer and exhortation.

This last Sunday was one of tender farewells to friends and neighbors.
They crowded about the Colonel after the services. They wished him
health and happiness and success in his new work.

The last greeting he got from an old bent neighbor of ninety years. It
brought a cloud to his brow. All day and into the night the thought
persisted and its shadow chilled the hours of his departure. James
Nelson was his name, of the ancient family of the Nelsons of Yorktown.

He held Lee's hand a long time and blinked at him with a pair of keen,
piercing eyes--keen from a spiritual light that burned within. He spoke
in painful deliberation as if he were translating a message.

"I am glad you are going to West Point, Colonel Lee. You will have time
for thinking. You will have time to study the art of war as great minds
must study it alone if they lead armies to victory. Generals are not
developed in the saddle on our plains fighting savages. Our country is
going to need a leader of supreme genius. I saw him in a vision, the
night I read in the _Richmond Enquirer_ that you had been called to West
Point. I shall not see you again. I am walking now into the sunset.
Soon the shadows will enfold me and I shall sleep the long sleep. I am
content. I have lived. I have loved. I have succeeded and failed. I have
swept the gamut of human passion and human emotion. I have no right to
more. Yet I envy you the glory of manhood in the crisis that is coming.
May the God of our fathers keep you and teach you and bless you is my
prayer."

Lee was too deeply moved for words to reply. He pressed his old friend's
hand, held it in silence and turned away.

The young people rode horseback. Never in his life had Phil seen
anything to equal the easy grace with which these Southern girls sat
their horses. Their mothers before them had been born in the saddle.
Their ease, their grace was not an acquirement of the teacher. It was
bred in the bone.

When a boy challenged a girl for a race, the challenge was