A celebrated apostle of the Methodist sect, on the Eastern shore of Maryland, was the Rev. Titus Bates. He had been twenty-six years engaged in the ministry, and was now a bronzed, worn, failing man, consumed by the zeal of his order, but still anxious to continue his work and die at his post. Like all his tribe, he was an itinerant, moving from town to town every second year—these towns being his places of abode, while his fields of labor were called "circuits," and comprised many houses of worship scattered through the surrounding district. He had chosen his wife with reference to his vocation, and she was equally earnest with himself. She attended the sick, prayed with the dying, taught Sabbath-schools, and organized religious meetings among the women. They had but one son, Paul, an odd, silent little fellow, who was thought to be more bashful than bright; but his parents loved him tenderly, and argued the highest usefulness from his still, sober, thoughtful habits. He was of a singularly dark complexion, with fine black eyes and curling hair, and he was now old enough to ride to and fro with his father upon the long pastoral journeys.

Paul's sixth birthday occurred on a raw Sunday in December. He had been promised, as a special treat on that occasion, a visit to Hogson's Corner, an old meeting-house near the bay-side, twenty miles distant. His mother woke him at an early hour, and, while he breakfasted, the gray pony Bob came to the door in the "sulky." His mother bade him to be a good boy, and kissed him; he took his seat upon a stool at his father's feet, and watched the stone parsonage fade quickly out of sight. The last houses of the town vanished; they passed some squalid huts of free negroes; and when, after an hour, they came to a grim, solitary hill, the snow began to fall. It beat down very fast, whitening the frozen furrows in the fields, making pyramids of the charred stumps, and bleaching the sinuous "worm-fences" which bordered the road. After a while, they found a gate built across the way, and Paul leaped out to open it. The snow was deep on the other side, and the little fellow's strength was taxed to push it back; but he succeeded, and his father applauded him. Then there were other gates; for there were few public highways here, and the routes led through private fields. It seemed that he had opened a great many gates before they came to the forest, and then Paul wrapped his chilled wet feet in the thick buffalo hide, and watched the dreary stretches of the pines moan by, the flakes still falling, and the wheels of the sulky dragging in the drifts. The road was very lonely; his father hummed snatches of hymns as they went, and the little boy shaped grotesque figures down the dim aisles of the woods, and wondered how it would be with travellers lost in their depths. He was not sorry when they reached the meeting-house—a black old pile of planks, propped upon logs, with a long shelter-roof for horses down the side of the graveyard. A couple of sleighs, a rough-covered wagon, called a "dearbourn," and several saddled horses, were tied beneath the roof. Two very aged negroes were seen coming up one of the cross-roads, and the shining, surging Chesapeake, bearing a few pale sails, was visible in the other direction. Some boors were gossiping in the churchyard, slashing their boots with their riding-whips; one lean, solemn man came out to welcome the preacher, addressing him as "Brother Bates;" and another led the sulky into the wagon-shed, and treated Bob to some ears of corn, which he needed very much.

Then they all repaired to the church, which looked inside like a great barn. The beams and shingles were bare; some swallows in the eaves flew and twittered at will; and a huge stove, with branching pipes, stood in the naked aisle. The pews were hard and prim, and occupied by pinch-visaged people; the pulpit was a plain shelf, with hanging oil-lamps on either side; and over the door in the rear projected a rheumatic gallery, where the black communicants were boxed up like criminals. A kind old woman gave Paul a ginger-cake, but his father motioned him to put it in his pocket; and after he had warmed his feet, he was told to sit in the pew nearest the preacher on what was called the "Amen side." Then the services began, the preacher leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the old ladies joining in at the wrong places. But after a while a venerable negro in the gallery tuned up, and sang down the shrill swallows with natural melody. The prayers were long, and broken by ejaculations from the pews. The text was announced amid profound silence, after everybody had coughed several times, and then the itinerant launched into his sermon. At first it was dry and argumentative, then burdened with divisions and quotations, but in the end he closed the great book, and made one of those fierce, feeling appeals—brimming with promises of grace and threatenings of hell—in words so homely that all felt them true, while the wild, interpolated cries of the believers thrilled and terrified the young.

Little Paul heard with pale lips these grim, religious revelations, and his child's fancy conjured up awful pictures of worlds beyond the grave. He wondered that the birds dared riot in the roof: the sky in the gable window was full of cloudy marvels; and the snow beat under the door, like a shroud blown out of one of the churchyard tombs. The closing prayer was said at last, the unconverted walked away, but five or six communicants remained to tell their experience in the class-meeting. Paul's father gave him permission to go into the yard if he liked, and the boy got into the sulky, beneath the buffalo, and heard the sobs and hymns floating dismally on the wind. Grim shapes thronged his mind again, wherein the Bible stories were mingled with tales of ghosts and strange nursery fables. They chased each other in and out, generating others as they went, and then came drowsiness, and Paul slept.

The class-meeting lasted an hour. It was very fervent and demonstrative; and when it was over the kind old lady who had given Paul the gingerbread asked the preacher home to dinner. She said that roasted turkey, wild duck, and pumpkin-pie were waiting for them; and Mr. Bates thought fondly what a treat it would be for Paul on his birthday. He was to preach again that afternoon, seven miles away, and so moved briskly toward the sulky.

"The poor fellow is asleep," said the preacher, seeing that the curling head was not thrust up at his approach. "I wonder of what he dreams?" He drew near as he spoke. Old Bob was munching his corn sedately; the sulky had a saucy air; the robe nestled in the front, with the tiny stool peeping from a corner; but Paul was not there. The preacher called aloud; the horses raised their ears in reply, and the wheels crackled in the frozen crust. He called again; some sleigh-bells jingled merrily, and then the pines moaned. He looked into the other vehicles; he watched for the little foot-tracks in the snow; he ran back to the old church, and searched beneath every pew.

"Brethren—sisters," he cried, "I cannot find my boy!" and his voice was tremulous. They gathered round him and some said that Paul had ridden away with the worldly lads; others, that he was hiding mischievously. But one silent bystander looked into the drifts, and traced four great boot-marks close to the sulky. He followed them across the road into the pines, and out into the road again, where they were lost in the multitude of impressions. "Brother," he faltered, "God give you strength! your boy has been stolen—kidnapped!"

The old man staggered, but the kind old lady caught him, and as he leaned upon her shoulder his face grew hard and blanched; then he removed his hat, and his gray hair streamed over his gaunt features. "Let us pray!" he said.

The preacher plodded to his next appointment as if he had still a child, and his sermon was as full and straightforward. He announced his bereavement from the pulpit when he had done, and the whole country was alarmed and excited. He bore the tidings to his desolate home, and his stricken wife heard it with a stern resignation. Thenceforward he preached more of the burning pit, and less of the golden city; his eyes were full of fierce light, and his visage grew long and ghastly. He denied himself all joys and comforts; his prayers rang in the midnight through the gloomy parsonage; and he toiled in the ministry as if reckless of life, and anxious to lose it in his Master's service. The end came at last; the world closed over the grim couple, and they hoped through the grave's portal to find their child.

When Paul awoke from his nap in the sulky, he found himself far in the forest, and moving swiftly forward. A huge negro, with bloodshot eyes, was transferring him to an evil-looking white man, and he struggled in the latter's arms, crying for his papa.

The negro drew a long knife from his breast and flourished it before Paul's face. "Hold um jaw, or I kill um dead!" he muttered. "Got um grave dug out yer."

"O yer young yerlin!" said the other man, boxing Paul's ears, "yer don't know yer own father, don't yer? I'm yer parpa!"

"You are not," cried Paul. "Where are you taking me? Where is the church, and the sulky, and old Bob?"

The negro drove his knife so close to Paul's throat that the boy flinched and shrieked.

"You dare to say fader to anybody," yelled the negro, "and I cut yo' heart out! You dare to tell yer name, or yer fader's name, or wha yo come from, and I cut yo' eyes out! I cut yo' heart and eyes out—do yo' yar?"

The lad was cowed into cold, tearless terror; he shrank from the glittering edge, and trembled at the giant's murderous expression. He thought they had brought him to this lonely spot to slay him, and he embraced silence as the only chance for his young life. He wondered if this were not one of his wild imaginings, or if it had not something to do with the punishment pronounced in the morning's fierce sermon.

The two men came to a ruined cabin after awhile; it was buried in deep shade; the logs were worm-eaten, and the clay chimney had fallen down. They climbed by a creaking ladder into the loft and laid Paul upon a ragged bed. A young negro woman and her child were there, and the boy saw that her foot was shackled to the floor, for the chain rattled as she moved. They gave him a piece of beef and a corn-cake, and stripping him of his tidy clothes, dressed him in the coarse blue drilling worn by slaves. The two men drank frequently from the same bottle, talking in low tones, and after a time both of them lay down and slept. The woman dandled her child to and fro, for it moaned painfully, and the pines without made a deep dirge. No birds trilled or screamed in this desert place, but a roaring as of loud waters was borne now and then on the twilight; it was the bay close below them, making thunder upon the beach.

When Paul woke from his second sleep he was on the deck of a vessel. The shore lay beneath him, and the waves heaved behind. It was night; the snow-flakes still filtered through the profound darkness, and the wind whistled in the rigging. A red lantern moved along the beach; some voices were heard speaking together, and one of them said: "Don't be afraid of the boy; I have sold lots paler than him. Lick him smartly if he gammons, and he'll tell no tales."

Then they lifted the anchor aboard; the tide floated off the sloop; they were soon scudding before the wind under a freezing starlight. Two weary days passed over Paul, of travel by land and water. They came to the city of Richmond at last, and marched him with five other unfortunates to the common slave-pen. It was situated in a squalid suburb, surrounded by a high spiked wall, and entered by an office from which a watchman could observe the interior through two grated doors. The pen consisted of a paved area open to the sky, except on one side, where it was protected by a shelving roof, and of a jail or den. The latter was walled up in a corner, but its inmates could look out upon the area through a window in the door, and their savage features revealed at the bars so terrified Paul that he retreated to the opposite corner, afraid to look towards them. Now and then they howled and blasphemed; for two were delirious from drunkenness and one was desperate from rage, and as they moved like tigers to and fro, their irons clanked behind them, dragging on the stone floor. A number of women were huddled together beneath the roof, some as fair as Paul, others as black as ebony. Some had babes at their breasts, others had no regard for their offspring, but sat stolidly apart while their children cried for nourishment. In the open place a bevy of the coarser inmates were holding a rude dance, a large gray-haired man patted time or "juber" with his feet and hands, calling the figures huskily aloud; while the women, with bright turbans tied around their heads, grinned and screamed with glee as they followed the measure with their large, heavy shoes.

Their efforts were directed not so much to grace as to strength, for some kept up the dance for a whole hour, divesting themselves of parcels of clothing as they proceeded, and breathing hard as if weary to exhaustion. The men applauded vociferously, coupling the names of the performers with wild ejaculations, but subsiding when the keeper appeared at the door occasionally to command less noise. Remote from the bacchanals crouched a serious group of negroes, who sang religious melodies, quite oblivious of their wild associates; and in still another quarter a humorous fellow was enlivening his constituents with odd sayings and stories. Paul's heart sank within him as he looked upon these scenes. A sense of his degradation rushed over his young mind, and he threw himself upon the stones with his head in his hands, and wept hot tears of bitterness. Henceforth he should be a creature, a thing, a slave! He must know no ambition but indolence, no bliss but ignorance, no rest but sleep, no hope but death! Long leagues must interpose between himself and his home; he should never kiss his mother again, or kneel with his father in the holiness of prayer. The recollections of his childhood would be crushed out by agonizing experiences of bondage; he would forget his name and the face of his friends, and at last preserve only the horrible consciousness that he was the chattel of his master!

The uproar continued far into the night; one poor creature was delivered of a child in the hazy light of the morning. Paul was too young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him; but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had to look back upon—cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one distinct and dreadful idea of gain—to be filched from that dusky bosom when its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble lips might lisp the accents of servility. Days and weeks passed over Paul, but he found no opportunity to tell his story. They kept him purposely that he might forget it, or feel the hopelessness of relating it. Other wretches came and went, till there remained none of the original inmates of his prison, and he learned to mingle with his coarse companions, joining sometimes in their gayety, and the high walls stood forever between his dreams and the sky till the sombre shadows were printed upon his heart.

The boy's turn came at length. He climbed the auction block before the gaping multitude, and leaped to show his suppleness. They were pleased with his still serious manner, the paleness of his skin, his thoughtful eyes, and the shining ringlets of his hair. Bids were bandied briskly upon him, and the auctioneer rattled glibly of the rare lot to be sold.

"Who owns the boy?" cried a bystander.

"Colonel James Purnell, of the Eastern shore," answered the auctioneer. "His mother is a likely piece that will be in the market presently."

Tears came to Paul's eyes, but he held down the great sob that started to his throat, and called lustily: "It is a wicked story! My father is white, and my mother is white! I am not a slave, and they have stolen me!"

A loud, long laugh broke from the crowd, and the trader cracked a merry joke, which helped the pleasantry.

"We may call that a 'white lie,'" he said; "but it is a peart lad, and the air with which he told it is worth a cool hundred! Going at four hundred dollars—four hundred," etc.

The bidding recommenced. The article rose in esteem, and Paul was pushed from the block into the arms of a tall, angular person, who led him into the city. That afternoon he was placed in a railway carriage, and on the third night he was quartered in Mobile, at the dwelling of his purchaser. The tall person proved to be the agent of a rich old lady—a childless widow—who required a handsome, active lad, to wait upon her person, and make a good appearance in the drawing-room.

She had many servants; but Paul was not compelled to associate with them, and his duties were light, though menial. When his mistress went out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms. He must stand behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peacock's feathers. He must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy her wants. She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one. On the contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her marvellously. If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a child's strong yearning for something to love, he hid his grief from those about him, and sought that consolation which the world cannot take away in the simple prayers he had conned from his mother. He was a slave, but not a negro. His pleasures were not theirs, for he had quick intelligence, and he shrank from their loud, lewd glee. Their blood had thickened through generations of bondage, and trained in the harness of beasts, they had become creatures of draught. His had rippled bright and brisk through generations of freedom, and a year could not drag him to their level. He had learned to read and write, and it was his habit to stand at the window in his leisure moments, adding to his information from some pleasant book; but his mistress supposed that he was looking at the pictures merely, till one day, entering the dining-room softly, she heard him reading aloud. He had a sweet, boy's voice, which somewhat pacified the anger she felt at such presumption in a slave; and though at first rebuking him, she reconsidered the matter during the evening, and bade him read to her from a new novel. Henceforward Paul gained favor, and his mistress found it convenient to employ him as an amanuensis. She released him from menial duties, and gave him neat attire, and it was wonderful how well these accessories became him. He was unassuming, as before, submitting with patience to his lot; and at length he became indispensable to Mrs. Everett. Her attachment to books of fiction amounted to dissipation, and the part that he bore in their perusal filled his warm imagination till his fancies were brighter than romance—they became poetry. The one great grief of his life touched his whole face with a pensive melancholy, but he forebore to tell them his true history again, preferring to wait for some golden moment when he might be believed and emancipated.

From the beginning Mrs. Everett's agent disliked him. Wait was a Northern adventurer, cool, courageous, and ambitious, who had settled in the South with the resolution of becoming rich, and he had pursued his purpose with steady inflexibility. He was not a bad man, but a bitter one, and Paul had in some sort divided Mrs. Everett's esteem from him. Previously he had been her sole and undisputed adviser, and as she was readily influenced, he hoped, in course of time, to be acceptable as her second husband. He was young and manly, and she was giddy and middle-aged. Her relatives held him in contempt, but he had proved his courage, and they did not care to cross him. But with the coming of Paul he had lost somewhat of her regard, and he had laid it to the boy's charge. Paul read his calm purpose in his keen eyes, and he shuddered at the thought of some day falling into his relentless hands. He labored to conciliate his enemy, but with little effect, until one afternoon, Wait told him to obtain permission from Mrs. Everett and come to the office. He dictated some ambiguous letters to Paul, and gave him many papers to burn, meanwhile inspecting a pair of long pistols which he took from a portmanteau. It was late in the afternoon when he had done, and then he bade Paul take the case of pistols, slip quietly into the street, and walk straight on till he was overtaken. He obeyed, not without suspicion, and when he reached the city limits found the agent, to his great surprise, seated in a carriage. Two other persons attended him, and one, who was bald and wore glasses, had a case of surgical instruments lying at his feet. Paul climbed to the driver's box, and they dashed along by the water-side, meeting a second carriage on their way. The last rays of sunset were streaming over the low landscape when both carriages stopped, their occupants dismounted, and Wait came to the front and reached up his hand to Paul.

"Good-by, boy," he said in a tone of unwonted tenderness; "remain here a moment and you will see me again!"

They filed along a dyke separating two swamps, and turning down to the beach, were hidden behind a line of cypress trees. For a few moments Paul only heard the roar of the surf, the noise of the distant town, and the short breathing of the sedate negro beside him. Then there were shouts, as of a person counting rapidly, and two reports so close that one seemed the echo of the other. A few minutes afterward the agent appeared, leaning upon the arms of his attendants. He was divested of coat and vest, and as he came nearer, bareheaded, Paul saw that his face was colorless and working as from deadly pain. His shirt was perforated close to the collar, and the blood flowing beneath had stained it to his waist, and dripped in a runnel from his boots. He fainted when he had taken his seat; and as the carriage rolled away, Paul looked back toward the duelling-ground, and beheld two men bearing upon their shoulders a stiff, straight burden, wrapped in a cloak.

The second carriage passed him, driven swiftly, and it seemed to emit a chill draught upon Paul like the damp wind from a tomb; it was the presence of death, at whose very mention we grow cold.

Wait had vindicated his courage, but at the expense of his life. He lingered on in agony many days; and Paul so pitied him that he stole into his darkened chamber and begged to do him kindnesses. The grim man lay implacable, waiting for death; but one night as he writhed with the dew upon his forehead, Paul heard him mutter, "My God! my mother!"

The boy remembered a quaint text of Scripture: "Save me, O God! for the waters have come in unto my soul;" and he repeated it in the strong man's ear. "Go on," cried Wait, rising upon his elbow; "I have heard that before: tell me the rest."

"I have the good book here," replied Paul. "I am sure it will be pleasant to you, sir, if you will let me read."

"Do so, boy; I used to know it well. An old friend taught those strange words to me, but I have forgotten them now."

Paul read some soothing and beautiful Psalms, which took his companion's mind back to his native mountains, and the white spire of the village church where he had worshipped with his mother. The hard lines melted in his face as he listened, but Paul fell upon a bitter verse, and the agent's conscience began to trouble him. He could not look into the boy's eyes, for they seemed to rebuke him, and at last he commanded Paul to stop.

It was midnight. They heard the great clock in the hall strike twelve, and all the household slumbered.

"Go to your mistress's room," said Wait; "tell her that I must see her now—she must come at once. The morning may never come to me. Go; God bless you!"

He called Paul back when he had got to the door, and added falteringly:

"My boy, do you say your prayers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you mind thinking of me when you say them to-night?"

"I do so every night, sir."

"Good-night!"

Paul heard the agent sobbing as he stole away; but when he knocked at Mrs. Everett's door she answered petulantly, and at first she refused to rise. She had little self-denial; it would pain her to enter a dying chamber; and she would have left Wait to perish, had not some strange passage from the romance entered her head of dead folk, with secrets on their minds, haunting the living. It would be very terrible to be haunted, and the old woman was frightened into obedience. When she returned her mind was disquieted, and she made Paul stay in her room to compose her with cheerful talk. Finally she fell asleep, and he hastened to the agent's chamber. It was very dark within, and he waited a moment that the other might recognize him. Wait seemed to be in deep slumber, though Paul could not hear him breathe; but as the lad ventured to place his head upon the quilt, it encountered a hand so cold and hard that it seemed to be marble. Paul knew that he need no longer remember his enemy in his prayers.

What transpired between his mistress and her agent at this dying interview Paul could not surmise, but he believed that it concerned himself. He perceived that Mrs. Everett treated him more considerately afterward; and many times, as he looked up from a long silence, he found her regarding him inquisitively. She asked him strange questions once, bearing upon his early life, and he was almost encouraged to reveal the secret of his birth; but she seemed to divine his purpose, and changed the theme. Something troubled her, he knew; and when he applied himself to conciliate and cheer her, at those moments she suffered most. Had she loved the stern, ambitious man whose closed chamber still chilled her mansion? Was it because she was childless, and travelling graveward? Or did she cherish a mother's feeling for Paul, and wish that he was of her race, and worthy to be her son? Toward each of these theories he inclined, favoring the last, and finally he concluded that she did not love, but feared him. He had grown tall and manly. An individual beauty, rather of mind than of face, developed in him, and his mistress had been prodigal of favors, so that his dress and ornaments corresponded with his person. He might have ruled, rather than served in her dwelling; but content with the recognition of his equality, he maintained the same modest guise, and his mistress felt an uneasy pride in his promotion. One day he found her weeping, and when he spoke she answered bitterly:

"Paul, you have ceased to love me; you are ungrateful; you wish to be free—you would leave me!"

He responded pleasantly—for he had become familiar with such moods—that he had found a new romance which he would read. It was not a long story, but a thrilling one, and based upon the simple narrative of Joseph in bondage. The outline was true, the details were fabulous, and the old lady marvelled that a theme so trite could be so well embellished. He read far into the night, and she bade him leave the book upon her table, that she might peruse it again.

"It is manuscript," he said, "and this is the only copy."

"Why, Paul," she said, "how came you by it?"

"I wrote it myself."

Paul was indeed the author, having filled in the sorrows of his hero from his own experiences. Mrs. Everett was loud in its praises; she was sure that it indicated genius, and she lay awake that night meditating an act of charity and of justice. She would make a free man of Paul, and he should find in far lands that equality which he could not obtain in his own. They would journey together. He should have means and advantages, and become her protÉgÉ and heir. But the strong self-love defeated this resolve. If Paul were not bound to her by law, he might forsake her, and she could not bear to lose him, for he had become a part of her heart; but when she broached the matter, Paul gave his parole never to leave her without consent.

He was still a slave, with the taint of a trampled race in his blood, and he said nothing to Mrs. Everett of his origin. They crossed the seas; they dwelt in pleasant places, beneath soft skies; and Paul grew in knowledge. But his patron was still harassed by some deep remorse. She hurried him from city to city like the fabled apostate, and at length fell sick in London, on the eve of their return to America. Paul gleaned from her ravings in delirium the cause of her unrest. Wait had made known to her on the night of his decease the secret of the young man's origin, and had conjured her to do justice to the lad. Her self-love had deterred her in consummating this duty, and conscience had therefore tortured her. She was enabled to reach New York, where she left the preacher's son the bulk of her property, and received his gratitude and forgiveness before she died.

Paul was free—haunted no longer by premonitions of future suffering; and his first impulse was to return to the Eastern shore and discover his desolate parents. His recollections of them were imperfect. He preserved many trifling circumstances, though more important events were forgotten; but as he made his way to the old village his heart beat high. There were the negro quarters, the cornfields, the twisting fences, and, at last, the shady stone parsonage—recollections they seemed of objects beheld in a foggy dream. They directed him to the Methodist Church—a prim, square structure in the centre of the village—a tavern on one side, a court-house and market on the other; and when the sexton threw open a window, the bleared light fell upon a marble slab set in the wall:

"Near this spot lie the remains of
Rev. Titus Bates,
for two years Pastor of this Congregation,
and of Peggy, his Wife.
'They have ceased from their labors, and their
works do follow them.'"

Paul's hopes fell. He walked through the village friendless, and, impelled by his swift-coming fancies, strolled far into the suburbs. A crowd was collected round a squalid negro cabin, and, less by interest than by instinct, he bent his steps toward it.

"What is the matter, friend?" he asked of a bystander.

"The boys hez scented kidnappers to this shanty," answered the man; "and by doggy! they going to trap 'em!"

The mob seemed to be fearfully incensed as Paul pushed close to the scene. There were said to be two of the man-stealers, both of whom had been very daring and successful. He heard their names called as Peter Gettis and Dave Goule, and the opinion was expressed that the first-named would not yield without a desperate struggle. The mob was hot and clamorous, and while a selected committee entered the den to search it, the rest brandished clubs and knives, and yelled for justice and blood. Word came at length that the kidnappers were concealed beneath the floor of the cabin; and at the hint, a score of stalwart fellows began to pull up the planks, while their associates formed a wide circle around, prepared to prevent escape.

Finally, the cry arose: "Here they air! This is them! Drag 'em out! Whoo-oop!"

The men within the cabin rushed through the doors and windows as if pursued, and a stalwart negro, with bloodshot eyes, almost naked, and flourishing a huge knife, staggered to the threshold, and glared fiercely round him.

The circle stood firm; some were clubbing their cudgels, others lifting their blades, and here and there along the line rang out the click of a pistol.

"Come, Pete," cried one of the ringleaders; "you're treed, Pete! Don't be a fool, but give yourself in."

The negro gnashed his teeth, and his wild eyes glared like coals of fire.

"Do you give me faih-play?" he bellowed, extending the knife.

"Yes, Pete, yes," answered the multitude.

"Then look heah," answered the wretch, drawing his knife across his throat. He staggered into the air like an ox, cursing as he came. They parted to avoid him, and as he reached a fence, a few rods from the cabin, he leaned upon it, and swaying to and fro, raised his horrible eyes to the sky.

Paul recognized his ancient captor with a thrill and a silent prayer. Vengeance had come in His own good time, and Paul felt no bitterness toward the poor fellow, but prayed forgiveness for his slipping soul.

The second offender burrowed so remotely that the mob could not drag him from his covert. They struck at him with knives, and hired dogs to creep beneath the logs and rend him, but in vain. At length one of the ringleaders obtained a torch, and the cabin was fired in several places. The flames spouted into the night, bursting from the small windows, and the roof fell in with a crash, scattering ashes and red-hot coals. They could hear the shriek of the victim now, and he was seen dancing among the fire-brands, for the blaze encircled him like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered together—the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands, and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the thunder of his executioners' huzzas.

Paul did not reveal himself. He left the village stealthily, and journeyed northward. Years afterwards a name was added to the tablet in the old church:

"Here lie also the Remains of the
Rev. Paul Bates.
'He went about doing good.'"