ids.

Sister Humphreys walked with no pause to the platform. Brother Morrow
was so short a man and she was so tall a woman that her handsome head
towered above his. She was a brown negro, but her lighter color and her
regular features and thinner, more sensitive lips were due to no
admixture of white blood; they came from a dash of the yellow races
mixed long before her time in the Old World, where her ancestors were
barbaric princes. She stood with the incomparable grace that is given
sometimes to the bearer of burdens, tall, erect, shapely. She spoke in a
mellow rich voice not raised a note above its speaking tone.

"Is this heah a meetin'?" gently interrogated Sister Humphreys of
Brother Morrow, "or have you-all done aju'ned?"

"We done aju'ned, sistah," Brother Morrow replied quickly, flinching
from a possible trap.

"In that case," Sister Humphreys argued at once, "will you kindly take
you' seat an' let me speak fo' de las' time to Zion Baptis' Chu'ch?"

It was impossible to refuse a hearing. Brother Morrow shuffled into a
lower seat.

"My people,"--a vague, incomprehensible thrill of apprehension and
magnetic fascination stirred the attentive faces, all save the widow
Macklin's; hers was bent on her own withered, toil-crooked hands while
she prayed,--"I want to say, first, that I nev' did aim to keep _on_
hu'tin' you' feelin's. But I am 'bleeged to save you' souls. You-all
know how my po' husban' toiled an' prayed. Thar's ol' people who loved
him an' followed his teachin's, but they went to their reward, an' he
was lef' with a generation of young niggers who feared neither God nor
man nor the grand jury--lying, stealing, with no more morals than pigs
an' no great cleaner. It broken my po' ol' man's heart, so he hadn't no
strength to stand the breast complaint, so he died. The last night I
heard him praying for you, an' I come to him. When he looked up at me I
knowed I couldn't hold him; I knowed he ain't never again goin' look up
at me with the light in his eyes an' the love in his smile like he
looked then. An' I sayd to him, 'Silas, honey, don' you worry 'bout that
there wuthless flock of yours. _I'll_ save 'em. I know the way. I sho'
do!' An' he believed me; because of his believing me his end was peace.
So you see, my people, I am 'bleeged to save you. I tol' him I know the
way; I do know it. You' pastor, who is a saint in heaven, done used
always the ways of gentleness. He preached the love of God, an'