Daddy Joe seemed to think that normal remarks were not to be expected from a visitant, possibly heavenly, at any rate having intimate knowledge and a message to deliver. "Yes, sah. Da's a fac'. We must work in de gyarden, sholy." "I have something for you to do." He stopped. Daddy Joe's sermon had seemed to imply an adverse opinion to negro freedom. "You are wrong, Daddy Joe. It would be better for the slaves to be free." "Fo' God!" "You really think so yourself. This is what you think, that it is meant they shall be free, but it is right to tell them that their freedom will be a trial for them and many of them will fail. This is what you think." "Da's sholy de efficaciousness." "You will promise, then, in order to help this forward, to do what I tell you, and in secret, so that no one here shall know. It is a small thing, but a help to the cause of the Union armies, which is the cause of the nation and the negro--you will do this?" "Yes, sah," in a trembling and awed whisper. "The promise is upon your conscience as a preacher of the Word." "Yes, sah," almost inaudibly. "This is it, then. You will give me the clothes you are wearing, for which I will pay you twenty dollars, and one of the horses hidden in the hill pasture." "Fo' God!" "You will take my horse in exchange, ride to-morrow morning, before daybreak, for Leesburg, and take the train to Washington. Have you ever been in Washington?" "Yes, sah." "I will give you a paper which you will show to any soldier about Washington who stops you, and he will let you pass. In the city you will find the War Department, and there leave that paper and another I will give you. The second paper you will not let any one see before you leave it at the War Department. You will there be given forty dollars. When you return you will come at night and take the horse up to the hill pasture. Will you have to account for your absence?" "Miss Meely done lef' me go preachin' round de cyounty, sah. Miss Meely"--hesitating--"Miss Meely te'ible sot down on de Yankees, sah." "Be careful, then. We must work in our garden." "Sholy." "And you see that this is your duty." "Yes, sah." "To-morrow morning, before daybreak, in the road beyond your church, we will separate, and you will not see me any more." Beside Daddy Joe's bowed-down humility and belief Gard had a sensation that in a measure was new--a sense of ignobleness and triviality. In some strange way there seemed to rise out of Daddy Joe a certain spiritual stature and significance. One seemed to discern that nowhere in his soul did he play a part, or play at anything, or remember himself. He took Gard to be perhaps, a half-divine evangelist. In Daddy Joe's primitive faith, Gard fancied, heavenly incarnated messengers came as easily among men as his ancestral gods had come in the jungle; spirits, evil or good, still rode the night wind; a magical influence of benefit or harm was a quality of things, like their color and touch.