"Yes," continued the policeman, "we shall get him before night. They are measuring his tracks now from the rear window of the church out of which some one caught a glimpse of him jumping. A bloodhound from a near by city will be brought over on the five train and he will certainly run him down." The policeman looked over to Rev. Josiah Nerve to hear him express sentiments of gratification at the vigilance of the police and the bright prospect of the early capture of the criminal. The Rev. Mr. Nerve looked at the policeman stupidly, frozen with fear. "See here!" said the policeman, drawing a bit of torn cloth from his vest pocket and holding it up to view. "This is a piece of his pants' leg. When he is found this will identify him beyond question. We found this hanging to a nail in a fence by which he must have run in making his escape." Rev. Josiah Nerve neither spoke nor moved. He pressed the torn pants' leg harder against its protector. The policeman, anxious to secure some expression of elation from Rev. Josiah Nerve, and disappointed that he had not thus far secured such, said, "From the way the people are talking, if the scamp is caught he will be lynched. The white people like you and your church. Yours is the only congregation in town that has not joined the craze to have churches finer than those of the white people. Thus they think well of you and are sorry for your misfortune. I am a policeman sworn to uphold the majesty of the law, but I will join a mob to help lynch the scoundrel that burned your church down. Well, I see you are too grieved to discuss the matter. Good day, parson," said the policeman, rising to go. Rev. Josiah Nerve felt a little strength return and he managed to say to the policeman, in a husky tone, "Good day," and _sotto voce_, "Good by." The policeman walked away musing to himself, "Surely niggers must have an immense amount of religion or of something. Now, that darkey preacher is so grieved about that plaguy barn, that he can't talk." While the policeman was thus musing as he walked along, Rev. Josiah Nerve was packing a valise. In the middle of that afternoon, some farmers not far distant from the city, saw a man wearing a long tail coat, which was slapping at the wind, his hat in one hand and a valise in the other, making for the woods at a rapid rate. Rev. Josiah Nerve, D. D. S., was not heard from in Richmond again. Perhaps he at last succeeded in dropping the despised "S," and lost his identity in the numerous throng of the veneered. The tragic, not the humorous in the experiences of Rev. Josiah Nerve, appealed to Erma. Had she even then a premonition that she, too, had been singled out by the wheels of the Juggernaut; that she, too, was to be the epitome of all that was tragic in the attempts of the Negro and Anglo-Saxon to journey side by side on the terms elected? CHAPTER IX. THE PIT IS DUG.