flict.

"Laura," he said, when they went away, "I should like to visit the
coloured school. Will you come with me?"

She hesitated, and he could see with half an eye that her answer was
dictated by a fine courage.

"Why, certainly, I will go. Why not? It is a place where a good work
is carried on."

"No, Laura," said the colonel smiling, "you need not go. On second
thought, I should prefer to go alone."

She insisted, but he was firm. He had no desire to go counter to her
instincts, or induce her to do anything that might provoke adverse
comment. Miss Laura had all the fine glow of courage, but was secretly
relieved at being excused from a trip so unconventional.

So the colonel found his way alone to the schoolhouse, an unpainted
frame structure in a barren, sandy lot upon a street somewhat removed
from the centre of the town and given over mainly to the humble homes
of Negroes. That his unannounced appearance created some embarrassment
was quite evident, but his friendliness toward the Negroes had already
been noised abroad, and he was welcomed with warmth, not to say
effusion, by the principal of the school, a tall, stalwart and dark
man with an intelligent expression, a deferential manner, and shrewd
but guarded eyes--the eyes of the jungle, the colonel had heard them
called; and the thought came to him, was it some ancestral jungle on
the distant coast of savage Africa, or the wilderness of another sort
in which the black people had wandered and were wandering still in
free America? The attendance was not large; at a glance the colonel
saw that there were but twenty-five pupils present.

"What is your total enrolment?" he asked the teacher.

"Well, sir," was the reply, "we have seventy-five or eighty on the
roll, but it threatened rain this morning, and as a great many of them
haven't got good shoes, they stayed at home for fear of getting their
feet wet."

The colonel had often noticed the black children paddling around
barefoot in the puddles on rainy days, but there was evidently some
point of etiquette connected with attending school barefoot. He had
passed more than twenty-five children on the streets, on his way to
the schoolhouse.

The building was even worse than that of the academy, and the
equipment poorer still. Upon the colonel asking to hear a recitation,
the teacher made some excuse and shrewdly requested him to make a few
remarks. They could recite, he said, at any time, but an opportuni