’Lias was happy, and the minister was in the best of spirits, for his charge seemed promising. He looked on at the boy’s jovial face, and laughed within himself; for, mused he, “it is so much harder for the devil to get into a cheerful heart than into a sullen, gloomy one.” By the time they were ready to go home Harold Dokesbury had received a promise from ’Lias to attend service the next morning and hear the sermon. There was a great jollification over the fish supper that night, and ’Lias and the minister were the heroes of the occasion. The old man again broke his silence, and recounted, with infinite dryness, ancient tales of his prowess with rod and line; while Aunt ‘Ca’line’ told of famous fish suppers that in the bygone days she had cooked for “de white folks.” In the midst of it all, however, ’Lias disappeared. No one had noticed when he slipped out, but all seemed to become conscious of his absence about the same time. The talk shifted, and finally simmered into silence. When the Rev. Mr. Dokesbury went to bed that night, his charge had not yet returned. The young minister woke early on the Sabbath morning, and he may be forgiven that the prospect of the ordeal through which he had to pass drove his care for ’Lias out of mind for the first few hours. But as he walked to church, flanked on one side by Aunt Caroline in the stiffest of ginghams and on the other by her husband stately in the magnificence of an antiquated “Jim-swinger,” his mind went back to the boy with sorrow. Where was he? What was he doing? Had the fear of a dull church service frightened him back to his old habits and haunts? There was a new sadness at the preacher’s heart as he threaded his way down the crowded church and ascended the rude pulpit. The church was stiflingly hot, and the morning sun still beat relentlessly in through the plain windows. The seats were rude wooden benches, in some instances without backs. To the right, filling the inner corner, sat the pillars of the church, stern, grim, and critical. Opposite them, and, like them, in seats at right angles to the main body, sat the older sisters, some of them dressed with good old-fashioned simplicity, while others yielding to newer tendencies were gotten up in gaudy attempts at finery. In the rear seats a dozen or so much beribboned mulatto girls tittered and giggled, and cast bold glances at the minister. The young man sighed as he placed the manuscript of his sermon between the leaves of the tattered Bible. “And this is Mt. Hope,” he was again saying to himself.