"Yes, sir," replied Randall, with some degree of hesitation; "ef you put it that way, I speck I is. Nobody ain't never gi' me no chanst for to be anything else. I jest did squeeze in the Northron Methodist Church; ef I'd 'a' had on a long coat, the tail would 'a' been ketched in the crack of the door. All these here new doin's an' new fashions makes me feel right ticklish, an' sometimes I ketch myself laughin' when they ain't nothin' to laugh at, an' it took me long for to find out that when you laugh in the wrong place it's because you ought to be cryin' by good rights. All this has been gwine on now some time, an' I done come to that pass that when a piece of paper blows round the cornder right sudden, I mighty nigh jump out'n my skin. I'm tellin' you the plain truth, suh! An' now, after all this, you want me to put on what little cloze I got an' walk right into Mr. Tuttle's jaws--the identual man that I've been runnin' fum I dunner how long--him that I come mighty nigh joltin' across--I done forgot what St. Luke (or maybe it wuz St. Mark--they run so close together in the book that I skacely know t'other fum which). Anyhow, they's a Bible name for the thing you want me to do; an' I tell you right now, I dunner whether for to do it or not. You white folks don't keer much what you do--I've done took notice of that; but when it comes down to a plain nigger, why, he's got to walk as thin as a batter cake; he's got to step like he's afeard of stickin' a needle in his foot. I'm tellin' you the truth, suh; I been dodgin' an' hidin' so long that when I hear anybody walkin' fast behind me, the flesh crawls on my back--yes, suh, natchally crawls--an' I have to hol' my breath for to keep fum breakin' loose an' runnin'. I'll go there, suh, an' I hope it'll be all right; but I never is to forget what St. Paul (or it may be St. Second Timothy) says on that head." Old Jonas frowned heavily, and further betrayed his irritation by a smothered malediction that included the entire negro race. Randall waited for no further outbreak; he melted, as it were, from the doorway, and disappeared as far as old Jonas was concerned, but Adelaide, who was sitting in a little bower she had made for herself, saw him standing by the fence gazing into space. The child after awhile turned her attention to play, but Randall held his ground for a long time, looking into the bright sky far beyond the bermuda hills for a proper solution of the problem he had in his mind. But it was a problem that the windy spaces with their blue perspective could not solve, and so, with a sigh, he betook himself to the courthouse, where the man whose life he had nearly taken was now holding forth as an officer of the law. The slave-driver had become a belated Unionist, then a Republican, and was now a Radical of the stripe and temper of poor Thaddeus Stevens, who was at that time the centre and motor of Radical politics.