Thereupon Nellie burst into tears, and disappeared behind the kitchen lattice. Later, some hours later, I had a chance to tell Katy. But it was then no news to her. She shook her philosophic head. "'Lightning and grace,' Biff used to say, 'you can't noways bet on, for there's no manner of knowing _where_ they'll strike.' Now that Nellie, she fairly bu'st into Miss Mercy's room, me being busy seeing Mr. Gordon safe outer the house; and I expected to find she'd riz Miss Mercy's temperature; but she'd most cured her instid; and Miss Mercy she set up and laffed out loud. And she ain't got smallpox, neither, not a bit; no more'n that ijit Sallie Kane, who's down with German measles and nothing wuss. I guess we was all more scared than hurt. But it beats all about Nellie--well, I want to be fair to all, she's been doing the sweeping better for a good while. All I say is, if Alterruria can convert Nellie Small there must be something decent in Alterruria." "I wish it might convert all of us--a _little_," said I. "I'm afraid I'm not enlightened enough to desire entire conversion; it would demand a new incarnation!" THROUGH THE TERRORS OF THE LAW A STORY OF ARKANSAS Sist' Esmeralda Humphreys was not present at the meeting of Zion Hard-shell Baptist Church. It is questionable whether there had been any such meeting had she been likely to attend, since how to dispense with the ministry of Sister Humphreys was its object, and the sister was a woman of power. But she had gone to the store for her semi-annual settlement of account. Therefore the disaffected in Zion raised their heads, perceiving that their hour was come. The "church-house" (of a week-day the school-house) crowned a gentle rise of ground on the outskirts of an Arkansas plantation. It was backed by the great gum forests, where the sun rose, while on one side, winding toward the reddening evening skies, the cypress slash had eaten its way through the brown clay to the Black River. Full of mystery and uncanny beauty was the slash, its sluggish gleam of water creeping darkly under solemn cypresses and monstrous hackberry-trees, tinseled with cow-lilies in summer, spattered with blood-red berries in winter, green with delicate beauty when the cypress is in leaf, or gray and softly brown when its short-lived foliage falls. Did one care to deal in mystical analogy, one might find in the slash suggestions of the African's undeveloped soul, where brute and child still battle for mastery. It was a school-house for children of the darker race only, and only negroes were in the little band whose hymns penetrated the wide sweep of cotton-fields, the weird African cadences wilder and more mournful than the hoot-owl's oboe keening in the forest. To-night the house was but sparsely filled by the regular worshipers, Zion congregation proper. Brother Zubaeel Morrow presided, because he had once attended a district Republican convention, where he had imbibed parliamentary lore.