“How many negro meetings has he broken up since you hired him?” “I don’t know exactly, but would say four or five. He has a sort of mania for that. He is always polite to us and never complains when asked to do extra work. We call on him to go errands at all hours of the day or night, and he goes cheerfully. I do not see how we could get on without him; he milks the cows if the cook is sick, cuts the stove-wood and carries it in, churns if there is nobody else to do it, feeds and curries the horses, helps your mother to make preserves, or pickles, or put up the fruit, and drives the carriage to church on Sunday. “Yet, Harry, if I had not known John and Mary, his parents, I might let him go without putting up a fight for him, but his daddy or mammy would have done anything for your mother, and your grandfather would turn over in his grave if he could know that I had not done my duty toward Jim. “I don’t know how serious this last affair is, but I will employ a lawyer and fight it out.” Harry Brown did not leave the city that day but remained at home to see if he could be of service to his aged and decrepit father. He went to the jail and had a talk with Jim, who had been his childhood playmate, and learned his side of the case. “Mr. Harry, you think de jedge will make it putty hard on me?” asked Jim, as the young white man turned to leave. “I can’t say, Jim, but he is a strict church man--a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian--and it would be difficult to predict the result. If it is possible to keep your fighting record out of court I think we can get him to be merciful, but if some one lugs your past in, then, with this Puritanical judge, you may take a tumble toward the chain-gang.” “Orh, Mr. Harry, you don’t think no white jedge wud send a good nigger lak me to de roads des fur breakin’ up a nigger camp meetin’, do you?” “Things have changed, Jim. You can’t tell nowadays, since the people have become so particular about drinking, gambling, and the like, what a judge will do. I’m a little uneasy about you.” “Well, Mr. Harry, tell Marse Henry to stan’ by me des one mo’ time, an’ den I’ll do better. Ef I gits out dis time I sho’ will ’have mysef.” Jim Parks was the kind of negro that one finds about oldtime Southern country homes: as black as the ace of spades, with a mouth full of pretty white teeth, every one as sound as a silver dollar, and muscular and active. There were but few things about the farm that he could not do when he tried. Everybody, even the other negroes, liked him. With white people he was mannerly, pleasant and obliging, always, and those who knew him at the Brown home, as he went about his work, could not believe the stories they heard of his midnight brawls and dark-house fights at negro gatherings. Usually he was such a happy-go-lucky chap that his white friends could not imagine him in the role of a bully.