(I have been leadin’ this horse behind the wagon, as it were.) Maggie told me this little incident afterwards (and now to hitch my horses agin where they belong, side by side, and in front of the mule) (metafor). [Illustration: THE OLD NEGRO.] After the buildings wuz destroyed and the threats aginst them so awful and skairful, this poor man and his sick wife and child jest run for their lives; nobody dast to take ’em in; they went from place to place, only to be driven away, in the peltin’ storm too, till at last they found a poor refuge in a black man’s cabin, where the baby died the next day. But so bitter wuz the feelin’ aginst these teachers that this black man who took them in wuz found lyin’ dead a few days after with a bullet through his heart. Finally, they succeeded in gettin’ to the cars and gettin’ back North, where the wife died within a week’s time. And the sorrow over this loss, the exposure and agitation of that time, and the failure of his life plans jest killed that good man too. He died broken-hearted within a year. All they had meant, all they had wanted wuz to carry out the Saviour’s principle, “Carry the Gospel to every creature.” Then why didn’t they have a chance to do it? I couldn’t tell, nor Josiah couldn’t, nor nobody. No wonder the tall black chimbly stood there a pintin’ up into the heavens like a great interrogation mark, a askin’ this solemn and unanswered conundrum: “Why evil is allowed to flourish and the good to be overthrown?” Yes, it wuz a conundrum that I couldn’t get the right answer to; but I thought more’n probable the Lord could answer it, and would in His own good time. And as I looked at it I thought mebby that onbeknown to me, or Josiah, or anybody, that tall black ruin was doin’ a silent work in the hearts of Victor and Felix and many other of the young, intelligent, and resolute amongst this dark race. Felix livin’, as he had, under the very shadder of it, so to speak, who could tell what influence it had in carvin’ this wrong down on the livin’ tablet of his heart, so it might be answered in all the work he might do in the future amongst his people? And Victor, how often had his sad eyes rested on it, who knew how such an object lesson wuz strikin’ deep truths in his great heart. Bible truths such as— “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And how it stood up black before him a askin’ him this everlastin’ and momentous question: “How long his people could endure such cruel wrong and outrage?” And mebby sometimes, as the moon shone bright on it, it loomed up in front of him some like a pillar, and he heard a voice fallin’ out of the clear illumined sky: “I have seen, I have seen the afflictions of my people which are in Egypt; and lo, I am come to deliver them.” “Get thee out of this land!” “Lo, I will send thee.” But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom....