That afternoon the friends drove over to Valencia, where at night Marty would preach again this his one sermon of the week; and J.W. left him there, turning his car homeward for the fifty-two miles to Delafield. As they parted, J.W. gripped Marty's hand and said: "Old man, I own up. I thought you ought not to bury yourself in the country, but I had no need to worry. I know preachers who are buried in town all right; you have a bigger field and a livelier one than they will ever find. And I'll never say another word about your two-weeks' school. If the Home Missions Board had nothing else to do, such work as it showed you how to do would be worth all the Board costs. I'm going to make trouble for Mr. Drury and the district superintendent and the bishop and the Board and anybody else I can get hold of, until Deep Creek gets the same sort of chance as this circuit of yours. If only they knew where to find another Martin Luther Shenk--that's the rub!" And with a last handclasp the chums went their separate ways. On Monday J.W. called up Pastor Drury and gave that gentleman, who was expecting it, a five-minute summary of his day with Marty. "I'm awfully glad I happened to think of going over there," he said, "not only for the sake of being with the old boy again, but because I've got some new notions about the country church, and about what we Methodists are beginning to do for the places where Methodism got its start." And Walter Drury said, "Yes, I'm glad, too." So he was; he could put down a new mark on the credit side of the Experiment. CHAPTER VI "IS HE NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?" The colored Methodists of Delafield, who called their church "Saint Marks," had always been on good terms with their white co-religionists. Mr. Drury and the pastor of Saint Marks found many occasions of helping each other in their work. The single way in which these two showed themselves conscious of the color line was that while the pastor of First Church often "preached" in Saint Marks, when the pastor of Saint Marks appeared in the pulpit of First Church, it was "to speak on some aspect of his work." J.W. knew Saint Marks of old. In his high-school days that church had for its preacher one of a fast-vanishing race, a man mighty in exhortation, even though narrowly circumscribed in scholastic equipment. His preaching was redolent of the camp meeting, and he counted that sermon lost which did not evoke a shout or two from the front benches. A few of First Church's younger people often went to sing at Saint Marks on special occasions, and went all the more cheerfully because of the chance it afforded to hear Brother King Officer preach. Where he got that name is not known, but he had no other.