if she
had come from another world. It was laughable, of course, and pathetic,
too, for Gabriel could laugh and feel sorry at the same moment.

"You haven't told me why you are sorry," said Nan, when the lad's
silence had become embarrassing to her.

"Well, I am just sorry," Gabriel replied.

"You are angry," she declared.

"No," he insisted, "I am just sorry. I don't know why, unless it's
because you are not the same. You have been changing all the time, I
reckon, but I never noticed it so much until to-day." His tone was one
of complaint.

As Nan stood there regarding Gabriel with an expression of perplexity in
her countenance, and tapping the ground impatiently with one foot, the
two young people got their first whiff of the troubles that had been
slowly gathering over that region. Around the corner near which they
stood, two men had paused to finish an earnest conversation. Evidently
they had been walking along, but their talk had become so interesting,
apparently, that they paused involuntarily. They were hid from Nan and
Gabriel by the high brick wall that enclosed Madame Awtry's back yard.

"As president of this league," said a voice which neither Nan nor
Gabriel could recognise, "you will have great responsibility. I hope you
realise it."

"I'm in hopes I does, suh," replied the other, whose voice there was no
difficulty in recognising as that of the Rev. Jeremiah Tomlin.

"As you so aptly put it last night at your church, the bottom rail is
now on top, and it will stay there if the coloured people know their own
interests. Every dollar that has been made in the South during the parst
two hundred years was made by the niggeroes and belongs to them."

"Dat is so, suh; dat is de Lord's trufe. I realise dat, suh; an' I'll
try fer ter make my people reelize it," responded the Rev. Jeremiah.

"What you lack in experience," continued the first speaker, "you make up
in numbers. It is important to remember that. Organise your race, get
them together, impress upon them the necessity of acting as one man.
Once organised, you will find leaders. All the arrangements have been
made for that."

"I hears you, suh; an' b'lieves you," replied the Rev. Jeremiah with
great ceremony.

"You have seen white men from a distance coming and going. Where did
they go?"

"Dey went ter Clopton's, suh; right dar an' nowhars else. I seed um,
suh, wid my own eyes."

"You don't know what they came for. Well, I will tell you: t