Then the other two went outside. The woman poked the fire, adding a few sticks. Sandy lay down beside it. He told his wife how that afternoon he had spied Caroline hiding in the bushes near where he worked. She acted like a terrified animal, he explained, so he had gone to her. Bit by bit she told him how Covey had beaten Captain Auld’s boy, striking his head and kicking him in the side, and left him in the yard. She had seen the boy crawl away into the woods. Surely this time he would die. “I do not think he die now. Man die hard.” Sandy thought a moment. “I help him.” “How?” Noma’s question took in the encircling woods, the bay. How could this boy escape? Sandy shook his head. “He no go now. This one time, he go back.” The woman waited. “I hear ’bout this boy--how he read and write. He smart with white man’s learning.” “Ah!” said the woman, beginning to understand. “Tonight I give him the knowing of black men. I call out the strength in his bones--the bones his mother made for him.” Sandy lay silent looking up through the tall trees at the stars. He spoke softly. “I see in him great strength. Now he must know--and each day he will add to it. When time ripe--he go. That time he not go alone.” And the woman nodded her head. * * * * * It was not the dawn flooding the Bay with splendor which woke Frederick, though the sun did come up like a golden ball and the waters turned to iridescent glory. Nor was it the crying of crows high up in the pine trees, nor even the barking of a dog somewhere down on the beach. Rather was it a gradual awareness of flaming words. Had he found a book, a new book more wonderful even than his precious _Columbian Orator_? He didn’t see the words; yet they seemed to be all around him--living things that carried him down wide rivers and over mountains and across spreading plains. Then it was people who were with him--black men, very tall and big and strong. They turned up rich earth as black as their broad backs; they hunted in forests; some of them were in cities, whole cities of black folks. For they were free: they went wherever they wished; they worked as they planned. They even flew like birds, high in the sky. He was up there with them, looking down on the earth which seemed so small. He stretched his wings. He was strong. He could fly. He could fly in a flock of people. Who were they? He listened closely. That’s it: he was not reading, he was listening. Somebody was making a speech. But it wasn’t a speech--not like any he had ever heard--not at all like the preacher in Baltimore.