The youth who lay dead on the track was Babe Cole, the youngest of Tom Cole's four sons.

Three years before Paul Judson left Jackson, in answer to that wordless message of the mountain that he interpreted as promising all success to him, Tom Cole had received a call to Shiloh African Baptist Church, the tall white church at the corner of Pine and Gammon streets, at one end of Atlanta's sprawling negro section. He had not succeeded in making farming in Fulton County pay.

"Nigguh caint make money grow nohow," he would complain to neighbors who had come to the crossroads church to hear his sermon, and stayed for the inevitable discussion of crops and stock and any other topic wandering minds might bring up. "Ah kin make cawn grow, an' peas grow, an' string-beans grow, wid de good Lawd's blessin'; Ah kin make pigs grow, an' chickens grow——"

"You eats 'em anyhow, Brudder Cole; ain't sayin' whar you gits 'em," chuckled Peter Bibb, the oldest elder.

The pastor joined in the laugh against himself. "Sounds lak you'se tryin' to establish an allerbi, Uncle Peter. Mebbe you ain't never heard dat our hens, de Plymouth Rocks Aunt Stella tends herse'f, is de fattes' in fo'teen miles." He grinned easily, bringing out the mesh of bronzed wrinkles beneath the knotty kinks of wire-black hair, powdered with uneven gray around the edges. "But Ah gotter go, breddren. Caint make no money here nohow; Ah's done preached de gospel six years now in dis chu'ch, an Ah reckons Ah done 'zausted mah message."

The urban congregation was proud of "Brudder Tom" from the start. "Ah wuz bawn in slavery," was his favorite beginning, "in bodily slavery; de good Lawd done riz me to freedom. Ah wuz bawn in slavery, in spir'chual slavery; de good Lawd done riz me to freedom. De Lawd sont me to bring grace erboundin' an' everlastin' to you sinnuhs; come unto de fol', oh brudders, let de Lawd's baptizin' wash you free f'um sin an' de ol' Debble's tracks on yo' soul——" They rose to his eloquent appeal; his open air "baptizin's" up Peachtree Creek were scenes of pervasive religious ecstasy.

Preaching was pleasant, but not profitable. Tom gradually secured a number of customers who called him in for day work, keeping lawns in order, hedge-clipping, and some regular gardening. The house he got at two dollars a week, from a white land-owner interested in the church; and there was a succession of invitations to dinner from the members of his congregation, whether well-to-do or not; "feeding the minister" was an acknowledged duty of all good African Baptists. But there were Stella Cole and the five hungry little Coles to be considered; these were not included in the invitation.

Stella finally, through the aid of her sister Caroline, maid to a family on Washington Street, got work as cook in one of the big houses on Pryor Avenue. It was much the most "hifalutin'" section of the city, she assured Tom, and Judge Land certainly looked the most important jurist in all Atlanta, when he walked stiffly down the front steps, beneath the lofty ante-bellum pillars, and let "Miss' Kate" deftly badge him with a lilac spray, before opening the low-swung gate and passing into the changing world without.

Stella figured that the two dollars a week, added to the panful of cornpone and scraps of left-over meat and dessert, which she was expected to take home every evening, raised the family to a position of positive prosperity.

One afternoon Tom Cole sat lounging upon a bed in his back room, talking over with a committee the "chitterling supper" to raise organ money—an entertainment in which the church members gave the food, then bought it back, the money going to the church. He was rounding up an easy third year at Shiloh Church, and looked forward to many more.

The front door snapped open with a peculiar sharpness. The committeemen sat up, surprised and puzzled. Stella's voice came to them, high-strung, weeping. "Tom! Lawd hab mercy! Tom——"

From behind her, through the closing door, they heard an unusual hubbub in the street.

"Stella—here Ah is——"

She stood before them, leaning against the door jamb, one hand behind her back. "Oh, Tom! They'se killed Cah'line—they'se killin' all the nigguhs——"

Tom drew nearer, his eyes open in alarmed fascination, his face washed with a dusky pallor. "Killed Cah'line——"

"Get mah babies, Tom. We gonter leave dis place, now."

"What's all dis, Miss' Cole?" one of the men hurled at her, jumping to his feet.

"Lawsy, you po' chile! What's de matter wid yu' han'?"

She brought it out from behind her, bleeding, crushed, pulpy. "Rock hit me," she said, straightly. "Git de babies, Tom. We gotter go."

"Whar we gwine?"

"Gawd knows. Dey's all over town by now. Hung two nigguhs on Capitol Avernoo; a man he hit Cah'line wid a rock, an' dey stomped all over her. Listen to 'em!" She shrieked this, half turning to the front. "Whar's Ed 'n' Will? Whar's de baby?"

Tom snatched at his hat; the committeemen reached for theirs. "Let's go out de back way. Diana's mindin' de babies, all de boys 'cep' Ed's dar; he's out in de alley. Can we go to de chu'ch?"

"Dey's burnin' de Meth'dis' chu'ch down de street."

"Police?"

"Won't he'p none."

One of the men spoke up. "Mah boss, Mistus Rylan, he tole me ef trouble ever come, to git in his cellar an' he'd pertec' me. We kin go 'cross lot. You all go on; I'm gwine to go by for Mamie an' de folks upstairs."

Stella rounded up the four larger children, took "Babe" on her arm, and steered Tom and two others of the committee across back fences, and obliquely through hot July fields of sturdy smartweed and brown-dusted grass. As they came out of an alley, just a block away from the Rylan back gate, they saw a moving flood of figures down the street two blocks away. The thinned tumult reached them. They sneaked across, running; Stella waved her bruised hand spasmodically. "Lawd, Lawd!"

Mrs. Rylan came at once in answer to her cook's excited message. "Gracie will show you the way to the cellar. I hope you'll be safe there. My husband phoned me that the rioting was serious."

In the underground dimness Stella appropriated for her sobered flock a garden bench, its back broken, standing on end in one corner. Tom's coat, spread in a barred chicken crate, made a pallet for "Babe."

"Keep mah place fuh me, Diany," she whispered fiercely. She helped the new arrivals get fixed on barrel tops, soap boxes, a rickety wheelbarrow, even an old set of bed springs tucked away in the darkest corner.

"Maw, will dey git us heah?" the children repeated in panicky insistence.

Stella smelled again the acrid liniment which had come through the crude bandage. "Ain' yo' pappy heah? Ain' he said de Lawd gwineter pertec' us? An' ain' de white man sont us heah? You shet up 'n' go ter sleep."

There were more than twenty in the big cellar finally; but the bacon and greens held out, and the ominous rioting only once howled through the street just outside.

Long after the uproar had quieted, Tom rose reverently from his cramped knees, stained by the lime on the floor. "Dar now! Ain't de Lawd done shelter' his own?"

"Amen, brudder! Amen!"

The third morning, Gracie came down with a lamp, followed by Mr. Rylan. "It's safe now," he announced. "The police are at last keeping order.... You can go home."

"De Lawd bless you, suh, an' yo' chillun an' all yo' folkses. De Lawd pertec' you——"

He brushed aside their tearful gratitude. "I was only too glad I had the chance," he said simply.

They stumbled into the sunlight, squinting with weakened eyes.

"I thought I'd die in dat place," one young woman chattered.

"You'd a died ef you wuzn't dar," an older one corrected her.

They started back across the parched fields. One by one they separated, until only the Coles and another family were left. When they came to their block, a hopeless depression gripped them. The packed row of houses across the street was a gray patch of ashes, where an occasional smoke-mist still climbed. Their own house was half-wrecked: panes broken, furniture hacked wantonly, the house torn and trampled as if a cyclone had driven through it. Tom's favorite new Bible, given by his congregation, his few gift books, were wrenched apart and scattered about the yard. The china and pans had been smashed. On the sidewalk was a charred pile of clothes; Ed's new suit, Babe's little pink shoes, one end of a sheet Miss' Land had given Stella last Christmas.... Nothing was as it had been.

On the top kitchen shelf, hidden in hoarded newspapers, Tom discovered the tattered old family Bible he had bought from an agent just after the marriage. God had protected His word....

There were no negroes to be seen on the street. Babe gooed uncertainly, Diana, who was only ten, cried her tears into the gingham slip of the baby she was holding. The boys looked on in simple wonder, unable to comprehend how things could change so.

An old negro hobbled by on a stick. "Whar's everybody, Brudder Jinkins?"

"Mos'ly driv' away. Some done lef' town fer good. Reckon Ah'se goin' back to Memphis. Dey doan' have no riots dar."

"When you gwine?"

"Mawnin' train, de ten-ten."

"We'se gwine too."

Stella listened without comment. There was no reason to stay here.

Tom talked to the two police at the next block. "They started to run away all the niggers, Uncle. Then they got better sense. Who in hell would do the work, if the niggers left? You don't have to go now."

Tom thanked them, and went on over to Judge Land's. Stella's week's wages were unpaid. The courteous Judge, upset at this conflict between the lower elements of both races, did his best to change Tom's mind. "Ah gotter go, Jedge. Dey's wu'thless nigguhs an' po' white trash ev'rywhere; but dey don't have trouble lak dis ev'rywhere."

He withdrew from the bank all his savings, which were deposited with the church's money, careful not to disturb the congregation's balance.

They reached the station early. The Jenkins family was already there; they had been drowsing since sun-up in the colored waiting-room. Tom went to buy the tickets. Here was a hitch. The money would not stretch to cover fares for all of them to Memphis, even with half-fares for the three oldest, and Babe and little Will free.

"You can get tickets for Adamsville, and have two dollars left over," said the uninterested agent. He knew the peculiarities of negro finance.

"Aw' right."

On the train, the little Coles and Stella were squeezed into one seat; elder Jenkins, Tom, and two other traveling negroes found a compartment together. The fugitive preacher was at once at home; he expounded the Africanized doctrines of the Baptist faith interminably. "Hit's only grace what kin save," he repeated. "Does de Lawd's grace dwell in yo' heart? Is you been bawn agin?"

Finally one of the strange negroes, who was highly impressed with the insistent doctrine, drew out from Tom the vague state of his plans. "Ah'll fin' somethin' to do," the black tongue of God concluded.

"An' you doan't know nobody in Adamsville? Doan't you belong to no lodge, or nothin'? Ain't you a Risin' Star, or a Sunshiner?"

Tom rubbed a shiny mahogany ear in earnest reflection. "Ah does belong to de Sons an' Daughters of Ancient Galilean Fishermen, for a fack."

"Dar now! Now, nigguh, I knows Adamsville, forrards an' back'ards. You git off at de Union Depot, den walk down to Avenoo C, an' go east twill you gits to de lodge. 'Bout Thuhty-fo'th Street. Dey'll fix you up."

They reached the lodge; its chairs furnished a place for the younger Coles to munch cold fish sandwiches and cram overripe bananas, while Tom went househunting. "Jus' you walk out to Joneses' Hill, in West Adamsville. You kin find a house, an' maybe a job with it." The business agent was full of suggestions.

At the first corner, the old negro considered carefully. West?... One horizon appeared an endless level; the other ended in a gentle hill climbing high above the houses at its base. "Dat mus' be dis Joneses' Hill."

He walked due east. On and on he plodded, on the lookout for the railroad yards that ran just below the hill; but there were no tracks to be seen. At last he struck Highland Boulevard, and then the slope to the mountain. The railroad must lie beyond it. He ambled aimlessly up the long dummy line to the breezy gap, then followed the curving road to the south. There were no houses here, only a sleepy July woodland.

Jays jawed at him from towering blackgums and bluegums, tiny hedge birds, flushed by his approach, whirred noisily into leafy coverts. He feasted on plump blackberries pocketed in a moist hollow, disturbing two quarrelsome chipmunks, who continued to scold after he had passed them. A homeless cur sidled cautiously, sniffed, was satisfied, joined his train.

He found a good stick, and walked on. Must be a railroad somewhere.

He stopped at last before a vacant house, old and decrepit, with sagging front porch, broken panes stuffed with weathered brown newspapers, a general air of run-downness. Maybe he had gone the wrong way. He decided to knock and ask. He knocked at the front door. No answer. He peered through the dusty, fly-scarred windows. Nothing inside, except one broken-down bed and piles of dusty yellowed papers on the floor. He walked laboriously around the house, looking in at each window. No one within. There was a good table in the kitchen, a rusted stove, an old clothes basket hanging on the wall beside a broken lantern, a dilapidated splint-bottomed chair. He came around to the front again.

The shade of the lonely spreading oak before the front porch was attractive. He sat down upon some cushioning chigger-weed. The July afternoon wore on; he slept.

He woke at the sound of feet sending the gravel flying. A white man approached.

"Hey, nigger, what you doing there?"

He got to his feet, his hat off. "Ah'm lookin' for Joneses' Hill, suh. Done los' mah way."

"I reckon you have! Jones' Hill is in West Adamsville, six miles from here. Live there?"

"Aimin' to."

"Where do you live now?"

"Ah jus' come to town, suh. Ain't picked out mah house yit."

Nathaniel Guild considered him. Looked like a respectable negro. "You married?"

"Yes, suh. Me 'n' mah ole 'ooman got five chillun, fo' boys an' one girl."

The white man looked abstractedly into his face. "I'm looking for a tenant for this house—someone who can keep an eye on the place, and do a little day work now and then."

There now! Tom had never doubted for a moment that the Lord would provide. His tone was persuasively eager. "Lawdy, boss, Ah's jes' de man you's lookin' for! Ah does all kin's of wu'k, an' mah ole 'ooman is sho' a powerful cook."

"I'll tell you what I'll do. You can come in, for three dollars a month rent. The house can be fixed up, and I'll see that you get more than enough work to pay it off. We may have work for you every day soon. If your wife's a good cook, Tom, you send her over to that new house you see yonder, to Mr. Judson; say Mr. Guild sent you." He walked back through the gate. "There's an excellent spring just at the bottom here; and if you can find any garden truck behind the house, you're welcome to it. There are some tomatoes, I know, and some turnips. If you want some seeds, Mr. Judson will let you have them.... Oh, by the way, here's your key."

When these suggestions had become realities, Stella was vehement in her praise of the Judson place. "Dat Miss' Mary, now, she's a sho' 'nuff lady! She order me 'roun' jes' lak Miss' Land useter. Dis is one gran' place, Tom."

The children scattered over the mountain, like the hedge rabbits they soon became acquainted with, and grew sturdy and strong from the pioneering. Old Tom learned the countryside, and particularly the negro settlement two miles back through the trees. Lilydale had a thriving Baptist Church, the First Zion, which competed vigorously for converts with the Nebo Methodist congregation, two hilly blocks away. Tom soon became an elder, and on the loss of the pastor, who was indicted as a murder suspect, the Georgia preacher naturally succeeded to his place. On weekdays Tom found himself in daily demand, as Hillcrest Subdivision expanded and developed. Even Ed, the oldest of his boys, found work for his strong sixteen-year muscles in the road-making. Jim and Will went to the city school, while Diana tended Babe, to let Stella cook for the Judsons.

Tom's keen instinct soon located the isolated hen roosts in the valley, and the more unprotected ones at the foot of the mountain. Surely the Lord's anointed deserved chicken.

With the knowledge that a chicken dinner awaited him on his return, his Sunday sermons gained unction and elegance. He was regarded as the most powerful disputer in this section of the valley, and his exhortations always secured a big turnout for the baptizing in Shadow Creek.

He felt welded to the mountain. He was caretaker of the whole estate, and lord of his half of it. He felt superior to the mere Lilydale negroes, even those who owned their own homes; it was more to be good enough to live near Mister Judson. As for the Adamsville negroes, his scorn for them boiled over weekly in his sermon. "Them crap-shootin', rum-soppin' Scratch-Ankle nigguhs——" The self-righteous congregation shivered delightedly as he pictured the sure hell-fire for the modern "Sodom-'n'-Gomorry."

Life had evidently provided a firm and pleasant routine for this wandering apostle of the Lord.

XVI

Tom Cole shifted his left leg from its cramped under position, replacing it over the right. He was careful not to let his heel scrape the shiny painted floor of the outer office of the Snell-Judson Real Estate and Development Company; white folks were particular about scratches. He had been waiting since eight-thirty for Mr. Judson to come in from the mountain; it was now after ten. It wasn't his fault if Mr. Judson was late. He hadn't done anything to deserve what Mr. Judson had said a week ago come next Friday, that waiting was the best thing he did.

He considered a patch once neatly covering the left knee with owlish deliberation. "My ole 'ooman's a powerful patcher," he told Peter, the gap watchman, when the mend was new. "Say she gonter patch mah britches wid shoe leather, she do."

That was a long time ago; the patch had bulged out on one side, and torn loose. He picked carefully at the frayed gap, widening it. Maybe Mr. Judson would notice it—it was about time he got that brown suit the boss wore around the garden in the morning.

He brought his mind back with an effort to what he had come for. He went over the figures again, painfully printed on the back of an envelope picked from the kitchen trash-basket. He rehearsed carefully what he would have to say. It wouldn't be hard to get that thirty-five dollars. Maybe he ought to ask for forty, or forty-five; that would leave something for himself and Stella.

He'd have to try, some day, to get more out of Miss' Mary for the First Zion Church. The organ money was overdue; and there was a second-hand red carpet at Geohegan's that would just fit the Sunday School room.

He snorted aloud, to the amazement of the stenographer busily at work in the corner. Shaking her head, she returned to her machine.... That Scales Green and the 'coon dog he wanted to sell, at church last Sunday! Wanted two dollars for an old yellow pup that looked like he'd only chase cows. Probably picked him up; the dog ought to be in the pound. Maybe he stole him. That was a nice 'coon dog that storekeeper Carr had; there was one just like him running around the Ellis Dairy below the Thirty-Eighth Street road. If he caught that dog roaming around Mr. Judson's place, he'd show them! Anyhow, Pup and Whitey were good 'cooners, he didn't need any more. You had to feed dogs somehow.

He mustn't forget about the cow-feed, or the saddle.

Paul Judson walked briskly in, an aster blue-purple against the soft gray lapel. "Hello, Tom, you here? I thought you were to prune those forsythias this morning."

"Miss' Mary done tole me to go by Dexter's an' have de side-saddle fixed, suh. One of de sturrup strops is broke. Ah had to come in for cow-feed an' oats."

"Get an order from Miss Simpson for the feed. And drive by the Union Depot on your way out; there's a box of fruit trees to set out on the hill across the gap."

He passed into the inside offices.

When he crossed over to the title room, half an hour later, Tom still sat in the same place, the top rim of the folded order showing neatly above the sweat-band in the cap on the negro's lap. "Still here?"

Tom rose awkwardly, puffing out his lips in uncertainty. "There wuz sump'n else Ah wanted to see you 'bout, suh."

"Well?"

"Ah wanted to ax a favor, Mr. Judson."

"What is it?"

"Ah wondered ef you could spare me a loan, suh? Make an edvance?"

"What do you want it for?"

The crumpled cap fell to the floor; Tom stooped and picked it up. "We done decided to sen' Diana to de Tuskegee school, suh. You got some of mah money; an' Ah's been savin' till Ah's got thuhteen dollars. She kin wu'k out in Tuskegee, an' make mos' of her 'spenses. She's goin' to take millinery."

"How much do you need?"

"Thuhty-five dollars, suh. Dat's for de fu'st year. She'll hatter go two years."

Paul considered the matter; a sigh of irritation escaped him. Higher education for negroes might be a good thing, in some cases; it was usually a waste of time. There was something wrong with the idea of it; a serving class ought, naturally, to remain uneducated. Education had a tendency to stir up unrest. Negroes who knew too much might seem respectful, but there was a suspicious glibness about them that warned that they had acquired something which, if it became formidable or wide-spread, might question the social framework on which Adamsville and the South were built. Still, Diana seemed a hard-working girl; it might do no harm.

"All right. Whenever she's ready to go, you can have the money."

"Thank you so kin'ly, suh. Ah'll pay back every cent——"

"Don't forget those fruit trees, Tom."

While Diana was finishing her first year, Tom's prosperity became too much for him. He had kept his eyes on the plump Wyandotte pullets at the Ellis Dairy, the same place that had lost a prized possum dog six months before. There was an eight-foot fence, with two feet of barbed wire at the top; and he knew that the Ellis boys had guns, and used them. But the chicken runs were behind the cow barns, and thus hidden from the house; and he had discovered an opening under the rear of the fence, where a mere trickle remained of the roystering April freshet. This gap was protected only by stakes angled inward from within the fence; and the moist ground allowed the central three to be worked up with ease.

He chose a May night, moonless and peaceful. It was almost one o'clock when he made his wet way under the fence, and followed the chicken-wire to the roosts. His fumbling fingers found the staple which held the lock chain. He pulled his hammer out of one of the "croker sacks," inserted the claw and pulled. It was hard in starting, then came easily; only the last pull resulted in a subdued and nerve-wracking screech as the metal curved out of the hard wood. He let the heated staple down quietly, and opened the door. The hens kept up a sleepy clutter; now was the time to use all his skill and tact.

He moved his hand from the wall along the pole, until it collided with the first warm feathers. His mind wandered to a memory of a night when he had seen an owl steal one of Mr. Judson's prized game hens. The thief had settled on a tree limb occupied by the hen, and gradually commenced shoving. The hen sleepily gave way. As she came to the end of the lopped-off limb, she had fallen, and the bird of prey had caught her before she reached the ground. Then Tom had fired.... Good thing nobody was watching him!

There was a smothered gurgle as his fingers closed around the neck. Deftly he twisted the head until the bones gave, then slipped it into the bag. Another, and another—the fowls had increased their drowsy disturbance, but were not yet alarmed.

He got two more, then decided that he had enough. No need to be a hog about it.

He started back for the door; his knee hit a feeding trough with a sudden crack. The noise was not great; but at the same moment a voice rang out, "Come out, nigger, I've got the door covered. Come out, or I'll shoot hell out of you."

Lordie, lordie! No use lying low; there was no other door to the henhouse, and if he waited until morning, he was caught sure.

"All right, suh, Ah's comin'."

He slid open the door a trifle; the light of a lantern lit on the ground cut its way in. "No tricks, now. Drop whatever you've got, and come out with your hands in the air—or I'll blow your head off."

"Ah ain't doin' no tricks, boss. Doan' shoot, for de Lawd's sake!"

"Come on, or——" came another voice.

He slid fearfully out, his arms raised. He stood blinking in the sudden shine.

From his left two figures closed in, shotguns half raised. "Just one old nigger, Ned; we'll phone the constable and turn him over."

"Lawdie, lawdie! Doan' give me to no constable; Ah ain't done nuthin!"

"How many chickens did you get, you black——"

Tom spoke volubly. "Ah thought dis was Mr. Joneses' roos', cap'n, an' he said Ah could come in some night an'——"

"Why, I know that nigger. Didn't you bring in Mr. Judson's Jersey last month for service?"

"Yessuh, dat Ah did. Ah's a minister of de gospel, an' ef Ah's made a little mistake to-night, Ah'll swear ter Gawd never to——"

"Bring him along."

"Lawd, boss, doan' send me to jail. Dey'll give me five years. Let me go dis time.... Ah won't never——"

"Come on——"

"Ah's a minister of de gospel, suh, an' ef Ah's arrested, what will mah flock think? Ef you lets me go——"

"How many hens did you get?"

'Fo', suh; fo' or five."

"I'll give you four or five seconds to get out of here. And you leave Adamsville, do you hear me? We know you. We're too busy to waste time around the criminal court. But I warn you, get out! If I catch you around this town again, I'll have Judge Hawkes send you up for ten years. Git!"

"De Lawd will reward you, suh, for——"

He raised the shotgun suggestively. "Three seconds left. Git!"

Minus cap and bags, Tom "got"—stumbling into the brook ditch on his face, then hurrying up the stream, and running blindly through the woods to the road, and so to the mountain. He sat down at last on the crest, a stitch wracking his side.

What chance did he have, with the Ellis boys after him with shotguns? Maybe he could lie low for a while; keep on the mountain, until the shotguns' energetic memories had turned to other things. He shuffled along the outcrop, then turned in to avoid the cactus that punctuated the hillock before Locust Hedge.

Mammy Stella was waiting for him. "Get them hens?"

"Ah got hell, Stella. Ah gotter clear out er Adamsville; dem Ellis boys done said so."

"Whar you gwine?" Her marital suspicion strengthened his resolve; a holiday from home had its advantages.

"Ah 'lowed Ah'd walk down ter Hazelton 'r Coalstock. Ah could get somethin' to do 'roun' de rollin' mill."

"What de chu'ch gonter do?"

"Brudder Adams he kin preachify tell Ah comes back."

"Why 'n' cher stay here?"

"An' git shot?"

She dismissed him, in the limp dawn, with wifely solicitude. "Don' cher be up to no tricks, Tom, or Ah 'low Ah'll pull all yer wool out when Ah git hol' of you."

"You'll see me when you see me, ole' 'ooman." And he was gone.

One warm morning in the April following, the Judsons' watchman and man-of-all-work, Peter, hesitated before his mistress, a barrow of uprooted poison-ivy poised in the grip of sturdy old hands, which were immune from the noxious irritation. "Ah done got a letter f'um Tom Cole, Miss' Mary."

"Where is he?"

"He's dead."

"You got a letter from him?"

"No'm; it was f'um de man he wu'ked for, in Coalstock. Died Chuesday las' week, de letter said. Dey buried him. Ah done tol' Stella."

"That's too bad, Peter. I'll have to speak to Stella." Her heart went out to the black woman, who had lost her husband; what if it had been Paul! She determined to turn over to the widow an old black silk that she had noticed the wrinkled eyes coveting.

The gift was lavishly appreciated.

"Thank 'ee, thank 'ee, Miss' Mary. Ah'm gwineter fix it up wid puhple—it'll make a gran' mo'nin' dress!"

"You didn't go to the funeral?"

"Ah ain't got no time to waste on no funerals, Miss' Mary, 'less dey's closer'n Coalstock."

Jim, the second boy, joined Ed in work upon the mountain; Will and Babe continued at school, although Stella grumbled about a sixteen-year-old negro bothering with books, when a job was handy.

Diana arrived home the last of May. The whole family surrounded her admiringly, as she hung the framed diploma on the sitting-room wall.

"Hit's beautiful," Stella said simply, as the daughter pointed out the school buildings in the half-tone oval in the center.

There was no opening, however, for a negro milliner in Adamsville. Tired with the futile search for work prepared for by her education, she replaced Stella in the Judson kitchen, to allow the elder woman the greater freedom which "washin'" permitted. With the coming of the clearing gangs, Will joined his two brothers at the work, leaving only fourteen-year-old Babe at school. Even he longed for the jingle of pay-day wealth in his overalls. One day he announced at home that Mr. Hewin had taken him on as a helper. "Three dollars a week, maw. What good is school, anyway?"

Then began a new period in the life of the Cole boys. The mountain had taken them to its red bosom; the lesson of isolated self-reliance which it had taught to Pelham Judson came in parallel form to them. They were a gang, four strong, which could cope with any equal number of Lilydale negroes, or Scratch Ankle or Buzzard Roost rock-throwers. If a larger number got after them, there was the mountain they could retreat to; its rocky reinforcement and refuge furnished safety.

Stella scolded them sharply on the night when they had fought the Harlan Avenue white boys. "Let them Lilydale niggers fool wid white trash, ef dey wants to. De Judsons is quality, don't you fergit; you let dat white trash be. Fight wid you' own kind. Ef a white man gin you any trouble, you let Marster Judson fix 'im."

The lesson sank in. They were quality negroes, lords of the mountain domain. Stocky Jim was the champion rough-and-tumble fighter of the Zion Church. "Ah kin lick any three Neboes wid mah toes an' teeth," he would boast in religious snobbery. Tom had had one of Mr. Judson's shotguns, to warn off marauders; the care of this descended to Ed, as the oldest, and the boys took turns in potting rabbits, flickers, and an occasional partridge, with shells borrowed from the big house. First choice of the game went to the Judson table; but there was enough left to fill out the scanty Cole menu of corn-pone, sow-belly, molasses, and a seasonal mess of greens.

The boys practiced hurling outcrop boulders at the big-trunked oaks until they could skin the bark four times out of five at fifty feet. The outdoor life, the clearing work, the continual "toting" of water from the icy spring in balanced buckets, toughened them into exuberant manhood. They did not marry, although Stella constantly scolded the older pair for "hangin' 'roun' dem Avenoo C skirts"; and their wider rambles added grass-ripened watermelons and plump chickens to the fare.

Diana, alone of the family, found life on the mountain bleakly unhappy. She possessed a frightened, dusky beauty. Adolescence had changed her from a gawky immaturity to a lush roundness, large-lipped and full-figured, and yet with the well moulded face and the soft brown texture of skin that are occasionally found in a mixture of blood. From some Aryan ancestor she had inherited features the reverse of negroid; and she revealed nothing of the unpleasant pertness often developed in the twilight realm where black and white intermingle.

The liberating touch of education had been just potent enough to dissatisfy her with the old, and too weak to furnish a self-sufficient substitute. The world of books she had begun to explore at Tuskegee; there was no one in the family group who could go with her in the talk or the dreamings that this led to. The haphazard home life, the thick enunciation, worse at meal times, these were the things she had begun to get away from; she could not reconcile herself to the old slough of "nigger" life.

The church gave her some outlet. She joined the various Ladies' Aids, took over an advanced Sunday School class, wheedled different ones of her night-restless brothers to escort her to the Zion sociables, the chitterling suppers, the frequent revivals. But here an obstacle lay in the women of the congregation. No newfangled notions for them, thank you. They considered her careful accent, her ideas borrowed from more progressive members of her race, an affront to Lilydale's time-hallowed way of doing things; she was shouldered into the background. The few educated negro men, Wyatt the druggist, Tom Strickland, who owned the five-story building in the city, the young lawyer who lived in Lilydale, were married, or were disagreeable. They found in her only a desire for expanding culture, not its achievement; they did not seek her out.

The isolation frequently overcame her. Nauseated by the glut of the slipshod home living, she would pull open one of her text books ... often to sit and cry, unable to read a line.

"You're gettin' peaked, Diany," Stella worried. "Huc-come you ain't so pert as when you come back?... You got a good job."

"I'm all right, mother."

One night she overheard the older boys fussing at Babe. "You too little, kid. Ef a cop started chasin' you, yo' short legs wouldn't do no good."

"Ah kin run faster 'n you, Ed. An' 'Banjo' said Ah could come along," he whined. "Maw, tell Ed 'n' Will 'n' Jim not to leave me behin'."

"Where are you boys going?" asked Diana.

Ed fidgeted sourly. "Aw, nowhar."

"Ah'll tell you," said Will boastingly. "Goin' to de Union Depot, to see what we kin pick up."

"Mother, will you let yo' boys rob cars?"

"Shut up, won't you?" Ed injected savagely.

Stella looked helpless. "You boys'll be careful, won't you? Yo' pappy got caught.... Babe's too little."

"You know that that 'Banjo' Strickland is a regular criminal, ma—even his brother Tom says so."

Stella closed her mouth. "Dey kin look after dey-selves, Ah reckon. Dey's growed up."

To belong to a family of day-laborers and common thieves! In passionate rebellion she told herself that it was more than she could bear.

For several days she studied the poison labels in the Judson medicine chest. If she only knew which would be painless....

She picked her dark way, a few nights later, over the rough planking across the nearest ramp—the excavating had begun, which meant better pay for the boys, and a mountain full of white and negro workers. The chill breathing of the Autumn wind drove her limp calico skirts swirling around her body. As she entered the darker tree-shadows beyond, she stopped suddenly, a chiller fear shaking her. A dark figure stood squarely in front, a figure that made no motion of stepping out of her way.

"Where you goin', nigger?"

He was one of the men she had seen working, a slouching young fellow—a white man.

"Home," she said, in a roughened voice.

She endeavored to brush past on the lower side of the pathway; the sheer cut of the hill obstructed the upper.

He put out a friendly hand, catching her arm in rude assertiveness. "Not so fast. You're the Cole gal, ain't you?"

"I'm Diana Cole. I'm going home."

Her tone trailed off weakly, as he stepped closer. She could see his face now, uncertain eyes squinting directly at her.

"Hey, good-looker," he dropped to an ingratiating whisper, with a leer to increase the effectiveness of his words. "What you say—wanter show me a bit of good time? What you say?"

She tried to shake herself free. "Let me go! Don't dare touch me——"

"Don't say dare," Jim Hewin said warmly, his left hand sliding appraisingly up the bared softness of her right arm. "Plump, eh? Nice piece of dark meat. I like you; I'll treat you right."

A gust of sudden fright, the blind fright of the female when her well-ordered maiden state is first threatened, shook over her; her arm lashed out impotently.

He stepped aside to avoid the blow.

"If you touch me ... I'll kill you...." Her words were gasps.

He held her arms again, pushing them behind her until her face was close before his. "You black devil! I've a mind to——"

Then he pulled her closer, fastening his dry lips against her protesting mouth. For a hushed second she took the unexpected caress quiescently; then fought, kicked, scratched, to get away. He held her firmly, shaking her until she ceased. Then he let her go.

She ran a few frightened steps, then turned in the dusky safety, facing him. Her mind held only an outraged hate; her feelings quivered and rioted in disquieting turmoil.

He smacked his lips broadly.

"You—you white trash——"

He faced her coldly. "When I want you,"—whistling, as though calling a dog, he turned up toward the crest—"you'll come...."

Her heart panting in wrenching excitement, she listened to his retreating steps. She stared, helplessly rooted in the accusing silence. Her knees trembled; she waited to regain strength.

Then she moved heavily toward the house, entering by the rickety kitchen steps in the rear.

With a child's helpless seeking, she walked down the hall. She must tell her mother at once. She heard Stella's rocker moving monotonously on the sagging front porch. A loose board squeaked in soothing rhythm.

Sharply she visualized the simple, wrinkled face.... It could never understand....

She turned wearily into her own room, and threw herself face downward on the bed. The loud pounding of her heart frightened her; she turned upon her back, staring at the constricted darkness of the blank ceiling.

XVII

An old negro, his sleep-wrinkled, shiny coat and paint-stained overalls itchy from stubble acquired in a deserted barn, idled down the switching track that ran behind the Judson lands. His scrubby gray beard was stained with blackberries; his knees were gritty and dank from kneeling beside the brook that slipped over the quartz ledges beside Billygoat Hill. In doubtful cogitation he knocked cinder and chert clusters down the steep fills, swinging his hickory stick with an air of ancient mastery.

"Lawd bless me, look at dem long houses!" as he passed the lower end of Hewintown.

A white man eyed him closely, a short man with a tarnished metal badge on his ore-stained coat.

"Got any wu'k?"

The guard relit his pipe. "Too old, nigger."

"I kin tote a powerful lot."

The guard continued to stare off at Shadow Mountain. Whistling good-naturedly, the old man continued down the track. "New houses! New fences! Things mus' be lookin' up!"

He observed the path that led to the crest just east of Hillcrest Cottage, and took instead the steep descent to the spring lot. He sniffed at the well-placed garden truck, noticed the ducks and the shiny duck house, skirted the widened concrete swimming pool, and came at last past the game house to the spring. From the tin dipper swinging on the twenty-penny nail he took a drink, first clearing out his mouth several times and spitting the warmed water into the spillway.

He looked furtively around, up toward the big estate, then along the path to the eastern crest. He took up the two buckets empty on a concrete pump base, filled them three-quarters, balanced them, and made his careful way up the latter path.

When he reached the top, he skirted the ramshackle house. At the back he paused at the two half-barrel tubs redolent with laundry soap. He stooped over it, pouring in the first big bucket.

A heavy voice rang from the kitchen above him. "Hey, nigger, what you doin'?"

He turned a puzzled face toward the window. "Ah'm—ah'm——"

A big roundish woman stepped out on the rickety porch. "Fuh Gawd's sake! Is you Tom?"

"Sho' Ah is." There was an aggrieved whine in his voice.

"You come back? Whar you been?"

He emptied the bucket, and brought the other to the bench under the back steps. "Ah been wu'kin'. Ah come back."

"We done got a letter sayin' you wuz dead."

He laughed broadly. "Ah ain't."

Tramping up the steps, he flung his wrinkled coat on its old nail above the lanterns, and sat down in a splint-bottomed chair, testing it carefully before he leaned back in it. "Got any breakfas', ole 'ooman? Ah's plumb starvin'."

She set out cold bacon, cold pone, a glass molasses pitcher with its top broken. "He'p yo'se'f, Tom. Ah's powerful glad you's home."

He spoke through a mouthful of bread and "long sweetening." "Ain't married agin, or nuthin'?"

"Ah ain't huntin' no mo' trouble."

She slid his emptied dishes into the loaded sink, and took up the two empty clothes baskets. "Come he'p me tote de clo'es back. Miss' Mary mebbe got somethin' for you to do."

At supper, the biggest kerosene lamp was lit on the middle of the table, and spread its smelly radiance over the reunited family. Ed and Jim had come in last, their cap-lamps still lit, their shirts clayey from the underground work. "Here's yo' pappy, boys, come back agin," announced Stella proudly.

Diana, her nerves on edge from another meeting with Jim Hewin, got in a side blow. "I suppose you've been with that 'Banjo' Strickland again, and couldn't get home in time for supper?"

"Aw, close yer trap," growled Ed. "Think you own the place!"

"Yer maw says you boys is wu'kin' hard."

Will, who possessed a good-natured sense of humor, chuckled appreciatively. "We sho' is! You know dat chicken-farm by de dam on Shadow Mountain, paw? We been wu'kin' powerful hard, an' dat's de Lawd's trufe!"

"We got fried chicken fo' supper, Tom," as Stella lifted the simmering pan with feigned indifference.

"An' dey ain't grow on no egg-plants, an' dat's a fack," continued Will.

"You'd a come in handy, paw, las' Sad'dy night," said Ed, who had recovered from his temporary ill-humor at Diana. "Ev'rybody's lef de place 'cep' club-foot Jake Simmons; dey lef him to watch. Me 'n' Banjo he'p'd him watch; we played poker, while de three boys poked off thuhteen hens an' a cockerel."

"And that isn't all that you all and 'Banjo' 'poke off,' either," interrupted Diana, her light brown face glowing a shade darker. "What would yo' paw say if I told him all I know?"

"What's dis? What's dis?" His explosive tones regained something of the former authority.

Stella laughed comfortably. "Nuthin' at all, Tom. Diana got a fool notion dat de boys been meddlin' wid cars at de Union Depot; dat's all."

Tom scratched his head in profound silence; the rest of the family watched him with differing emotions. At length he spoke unctuously. "De Lawd he put chicken-roos'eses an' melon-patches whar dey is easy to get at; it ain't nacheral for a nigger to let a hen suffer dis vale of tribulation, or let a melon grow ole an' useless on de vine. Cars is different. Cars is different. You boys ain't got kotched at nothin'?"

"You bet we ain't!"

"Den Ah don't know nothin', an' Diana don't know nothin'. You'd better watch out, dat's all Ah say. Calaboose never wuz no black man's frien'."

"We's careful, paw. We got regular jobs."

"Dat's all Ah say. Bring out mah Bible, Babe; Ah ain't read de Scripchers for two years."

"We done jined de union, paw," said Babe, laying the shaggy-eared family Bible in the yellow circle of lamp light. "De miners' union."

"A lot you all know about unions!" sniffed Diana.

Tom nodded reverently. "Unions is good. Ah am de resurrection an' de life, says de Lawd. De Lawd done sont unions to he'p his cullud chillun."

"An' Jim's de finansher secretary. He gits de money."

"Dat's good too. You boys is hustlers, lak yo' ole paw was."

The Cole life went on as if he had never been away.

Some weeks later, Stella Cole had just straightened up from the half-barrel tubs, to wring a soggy batch of towels before "renchin'" them in the clearer water, when she looked up with that uncanny premonition of danger which lower animals and lower races possess. The ground shivered; then a hideous noise broke over the sunned and silent trees, deafening her. The vast growl of the dynamite explosion rang shrilly in her ears; she fell on trembling knees, praying.

The crash of falling timbers behind made her look around. The unsteady ground, she said afterwards, "shook lak you wuz shakin' a counterpane." The rickety step supports crumpled, the rotted square of the back porch crashed in on the bench of water-buckets below.

There was a droning noise in the air, the sound of running steps along the road passing above the house. Toward the farther mines, beyond her house and the next hill, she saw a palpable haze, smoke-like and yet not smoke, dulling the sky.

"Mah boys!" she gasped, and started running puffily for the front gate, and the road beyond.

She stood aside to let a screeching machine throb past her. It was Mr. Pelham; the sight of his tense and collected gaze reassured her. Mr. Pelham wouldn't let anything happen to her boys.

She shrank into the outer fringe of the tear-eyed, wailing Hewintown women, trying desperately to get some news. She wandered twice into the thick air at the top of the ramp, but the acrid heaviness drove her back. The men she spoke to cursed, shoving her aside. She slumped to the ground, moaning in inarticulate misery. Lord, they were all dead!

Then she saw Ed running with an empty bucket, his head bandaged, his face grimed and ferocious. "Ed! Eddie! Whar's Babe, an' Jim, an' Will——"

He stopped, coughing, gasping. "Jim's killed, ma. Dey brung out his body. Hit's yonder under dem trees.... Babe's all right; ain't seed Will. Mebbe he's caved in." He hurried off, face set and purposeful.

"Mah Jim! Mah Jim!" She pulled her trembling body from the ground, and set off on unsteady feet toward the ominous trees.

The body was not there. "You might look in the Company stores, in Hewintown," said a sweet voiced girl, her face torn with sympathy.

"Thank 'ee, ma'am." She stumbled weakly off, her uncovered head dizzy from the excitement and the sun. Her lips repeated over and over, "Mah Will! Mah Jim!"

The sudden dark of the storeroom clouded her vision. From body to body she went. Here were the negroes. This bloodied face was like—No. She went on.

At length she found what she sought. Weak from exhaustion and shock, she crumpled up beside the limp warmness that had been her second son.

Here Diana found her, a Diana pale and frightened, her right arm bandaged to the shoulder, blood caked in dusky crimson at the height of her breast. "Mother! Is this.... Jim?"

Stella raised herself drowsily. "Yeh, dis is Jim." She looked at the girl fearfully, a vague horror channelling her face. "Is Will daid too?"

"Will's all right.... You come home with me."

Stella faced the girl when they were outside. "Will all right? Babe all right?"

Diana nodded.

"What's wrong wid yo' arm, girl?"

"Nothin'. A pane of glass scratched it. It's all right."

Jim's funeral, the Sunday following, was a notable affair. A committee of fellow-members from the union marched first. The ornately rosetted Brethren of the Morning Star, and the proud ranks of the Sons and Daughters of Ancient Galilean Fishermen, came next. Last were the comfortably filled livery carriages, furnished by the lodges as the proper foil for their flamboyant officers. Stella brought out her old black silk, in sorrow and pride. Tom's successor, Brother Adams, preached the funeral sermon. "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform," was the burden of sermon and song. There was no suggestion among the elder heads that the devil, or the Birrell-Florence-Mountain Mining Company, had had a hand in this particular wonder, this harvest of dumb death.

Tom, busied with funeral sermons for other victims, received gratefully the benefits from the two lodges. "Ain't dar nothin' f'um dat union Jim set sech store on?"

"Unions don't have benefits, paw. We gwine ter git our benefit strikin'," explained Will painfully.

"Lots of use dey are, den! Whuffur you belong to su'thin' what ain't got no benefits?"

Diana and Stella sided with the father, but the boys were determined. "Dey say de comp'ny ain't gwine pay no damages for killin' de miners. We gwine strike an' make 'em pay!" insisted Will.

"We gotter git money somehow, ain't we?" said Ed, grouchily.

"Dat's foolishness," argued Tom. "How you think you gwinter make white folks do what dey don't want to, huh? Dis union business is foolishness."

The unusual excitement of several sermons a day brought on an attack of Tom's old sickness. At Paul Judson's suggestion, he walked himself over, one boiling afternoon, to the free ward of the "horse-pittle."

Less than two weeks after his limping departure, old Peter accosted Mary Judson respectfully, as she stepped into her electric at the side door of Hillcrest. "Ole Tom Cole's done for dis time, Miss' Mary."

"Yes, Peter? Are you sure?"

"Dey cut him open in de horse-pittle, an' he's dead sho'. A nigger what wu'k dar done tol' me."

Stella was close-lipped about the matter. "Dey do say he is daid dis time, Miss' Mary. Too much preachin' ain't nacheral."

Diana saw, for the fourth time, the slouching figure in the dusk of the mountain roadway, as she returned that night from the big house. She came up to him with certainty, by now used to the mixed menace of his presence. "What are you hangin' around me for, Jim Hewin?"

"You know what I want, brown baby. Aw, don't be so damn' stingy!"

He took her familiarly by her dusky, well-rounded arm; she shook him off petulantly. "I've told you——"

He held the arm more confidently. "You ain't in no hurry. We'll walk up a piece——"

Her feet retarded, as he turned up the stubby grass-rugged path. He pulled her after him with a low chuckle of insolent arrogance.

Her tones were more docile, soberly argumentative. "Why don't you go to your white girl? You told me you were going to get married——"

"She kin wait."

They were deep in the obscurity of the oak thicket now; the path was cherty, grassless. She walked easily in front of him, then stopped in the topmost shadow, as the murky panorama of the night city opened before them. She stood wrapped in the dusky wonder of a sky stained with echoes of furnace fire, a dun horizon broken with twinkling patterns of streets and avenues. Around her waist he coiled a determined arm; in her he saw the beauty that she found in the broken mystery below.

"Let's sit down."

Gathering her skirts close, she sat on the dry grass, shrinking slightly from his touch. He let her have her fill of the shining moment; but his hand continued its gentle stroking along her arm, her shoulders, the soft curve of her neck.

A subtle riot shivered out of nowhere into her emotions, an agonizing quiver so sweet that it must be wicked. Her distressed face besought his, "Don't, don't, Jim——"

He did not answer; nor did he stop. A wild pagan stir whipped her blood, giving the blasphemous counsel that she should throw herself into his arms. It was the proximity of the male calling to his mate; it was more—it was the answering tremor of the woman of a lower, darker race, the mountain wildness dominant in her blood, when chosen by the man of the higher, lighter strain.

The stern Puritanism of her training fought against this. She must save herself whole for a man of her own color; she thought of the negro poet's magnificent lines about the black Mary, who was to bring forth the black Messiah to lead his brethren out of bondage....

"Gimme your lips, honey."

She pulled back, trembling, from the dominant triumph in his voice. His arm swept tightly around her, she was dragged against him. Her weakness melted to nothing in the presence of this mighty outer and inner strength.

Slowly she felt herself losing. Her prisoned hands struck out feebly against his face; yet even in her fighting she fancied that the man whose face was hidden in the night before her was not the repulsive, leering mine foreman, but the dim white knight of her hid dreamings.

With startling suddenness she yielded to his command. His lips fastened to hers, clung there. She felt that the whole universe became a kiss; melted, eddied together into one point of mad moist contact. Her struggles to free her lips drew her closer to him. She was conscious of his hot hand pressing against her body, burning through the thin calico waist. Then she lost consciousness of bewildering details.

With rude courtesy Jim Hewin steadied her feet as she walked down the last sharp slope to the road.

He turned to leave; an arm detained him. Her tones were low and pleadingly sweet. "A good night one, now."

Head bowed, tired blood pounding, she slipped with furtive haste toward the darkened windows of the shack that was her home.