The porch and the windows of the drawing-room were filled with guests of fairer complexion, but in demeanor and general behavior not a whit more quietly reverent. The brief invocation, the reading of the Scriptures, and the sermon were the duty of the presiding clergyman. He stood at the head of the short flight of steps, facing the dusky throng, and paying no more heed to the small audience behind him than if it had not been. It was the “colored people’s” service. In the selection of hymns the leader was guided by his knowledge of what would be familiar to them. The first went with a swing and a rush, that shook the branches above the singers’ heads, and brought down slow showers of tinted leaves upon the grass. It was a perfect afternoon. The fields were golden brown; no frost had fallen to blacken or bleach them. Hickories were canopies of warm amber; oaks were reddening, and the maples were aglow with autumnal fires. The still air was nutty sweet. The prayer, immediately preceding the sermon, was offered by an aged farm-hand, upon whom the leader called to conduct our devotions. His hair was pale chinchilla; his back was bent, and his thin voice quavered sadly. All the same, he voiced the petitions of every heart for strength, wisdom, and righteousness, briefly and pertinently. The sermon over, Dabney was bidden to “lead us in prayer.” I was more than curious to hear the “gifted” brother. I had, on the drive out from the village, illustrations of his practice of introducing pointed personalities into extempore blending of supplication, confession, and adoration. How, the year before, when the smallpox appeared in the lower end of the village, Doctor Flournoy, a leading physician in the county, undertook the charge of the few cases of the dreaded disease, quarantining himself from the homes of other patients and acquaintances. In the cold weather, the second service of the Sabbath was still for the negroes. But they occupied the lower part of the church, and the whites sat in the gallery, reversing the order of the morning services. There were few in the gallery when Doctor Flournoy, peeping in at the door, thought it safe to slip into a seat in the choir-loft, which was quite empty. Dabney’s falcon eye had descried him, and when he arose to pray he “improved” the incident: “O Lord! we beseech Thee to bless and take care of the good doctor who has _crope_ into the gallery up yonder, ’cause why, he’s afeerd he may carry smallpox in his clo’es to some of us. Be a shield about that good man whose heart so faints for the courts of the Lord that he jes’ can’t keep away. See to it, O Shepherd of Thine Isrul! that he don’t ketch the smallpox himself!”