easoned, and plausible. He was evidently
feeling for the sympathy of his audience, and while they were not
enthusiastic, they warmed to him gradually and he certainly was strongly
impressing them.

Bles was thinking. He sat in the back of the hall, tense, alert,
nervous. As the speaker progressed a white man came in and sat down
beside him. He was spectacled, with bushy eyebrows and a sleepy look.
But he did not sleep. He was very observant.

"Who's speaking?" he asked Bles, and Bles told him. Then he inquired
about one or two other persons. Bles could not inform him, but Stillings
could and did. Stillings seemed willing to devote considerable time to
him.

Bles forgot the man. He was almost crouching for a spring, and no sooner
had the speaker, with a really fine apostrophe to independence and
reason in voting, sat down, than Bles was on his feet, walking forward.
His form was commanding, his voice deep and musical, and his
earnestness terribly evident. He hardly waited for recognition from the
slightly astonished president, but fairly burst into speech.

"I am from Alabama," he began earnestly, "and I know the Democratic
Party." Then he told of government and conditions in the Black Belt, of
the lying, oppression, and helplessness of the sodden black masses;
then, turning, he reminded them of the history of slavery. Finally, he
pointed to Lincoln's picture and to Sumner's and mentioned other white
friends.

"And, my brothers, they are not all dead yet. The gentleman spoke of
Senator Smith and blamed and ridiculed him. I know Senator Smith but
slightly, but I do know his sister well."

Dropping to simple narrative, he told of Miss Smith and of his coming to
school; and if his audience felt that great depth of emotion that welled
beneath his quiet, almost hesitating, address, it was not simply because
of what he did say, but because, too, of the unspoken story that lay too
deep for words. He spoke for nearly an hour, and when he stopped, for a
moment his hearers sighed and then sprang into a whirlwind of applause.
They shouted, clapped, and waved while he sat in blank amazement, and
was with difficulty forced to the rostrum to bow again and again. The
spectacled white man leaned over to Stillings.

"Who is he?" he asked. Stillings told him. The man noted the name and
went quietly out.

Miss Wynn sat lost in thought, and Teerswell beside her fumed. She was
not easily moved, but that speech had moved her. If he