object, and the sister was a
woman of power. But she had gone to the store for her semi-annual
settlement of account. Therefore the disaffected in Zion raised their
heads, perceiving that their hour was come.

The "church-house" (of a week-day the school-house) crowned a gentle
rise of ground on the outskirts of an Arkansas plantation. It was backed
by the great gum forests, where the sun rose, while on one side, winding
toward the reddening evening skies, the cypress slash had eaten its way
through the brown clay to the Black River. Full of mystery and uncanny
beauty was the slash, its sluggish gleam of water creeping darkly under
solemn cypresses and monstrous hackberry-trees, tinseled with cow-lilies
in summer, spattered with blood-red berries in winter, green with
delicate beauty when the cypress is in leaf, or gray and softly brown
when its short-lived foliage falls. Did one care to deal in mystical
analogy, one might find in the slash suggestions of the African's
undeveloped soul, where brute and child still battle for mastery.

It was a school-house for children of the darker race only, and only
negroes were in the little band whose hymns penetrated the wide sweep of
cotton-fields, the weird African cadences wilder and more mournful than
the hoot-owl's oboe keening in the forest. To-night the house was but
sparsely filled by the regular worshipers, Zion congregation proper.
Brother Zubaeel Morrow presided, because he had once attended a district
Republican convention, where he had imbibed parliamentary lore.

"Dis meetin' will please come to ordah," he announced; "is you-all ready
fo' de question?"

"W' are question, Bruddah Morrow?" called out a brother in the rear
seats.

"Bruddah Carroll, you is out of ordah. Whenst I git in dis cheer an take
dis gabble,"--he extended the hatchet used, before its promotion, to
chop kindling,--"take notice, I is de _Cheer_; you-all is to 'dress me
as 'Mist' Cheerman.' You is axin' 'bout de question: de question is,
Shall Sist' Esmereldy Humphreys continner to usu'p de rights of we-alls
pastor? Ain't dat the onderstandin' of dis here awjence?"

Signs of approval and assent came from the audience. The chairman,
rising, took the attitude of the white speaker whom he had admired most
at the convention, plunging one hand into the bosom of his
coat--buttoned for that purpose--and gazing solemnly about him. All the
colored population of the country-side were proud of the school