speaker gave his final sentence; the town band crashed in
determinedly with "Home, Sweet Home." To its closing strains the county
people, afoot, on horseback, in old, roomy, high-swung carriages, took
this road and that. The townsfolk, still excited, still discussing,
lingered awhile round the court house or on the verandah of the old
hotel, but at last these groups dissolved also. The units betook
themselves home to fireside and supper, and the sun set behind the
Alleghenies.

Allan Gold, striding over the hills toward Thunder Run, caught up with
the miller from Mill Creek, and the two walked side by side until their
roads diverged. The miller was a slow man, but to-day there was a red in
his cheek and a light in his eye. "Just so," he said shortly. "They must
keep out of my mill race or they'll get caught in the wheel."

"Mr. Green," said Allan, "how much of all this trouble do you suppose is
really about the negro? I was brought up to wish that Virginia had never
held a slave."

"So were most of us. You don't hold any."

"No."

"No more I don't. No more does Tom Watts. Nor Anderson West. Nor the
Taylors. Nor five sixths of the farming folk about here. Nor seven
eighths of the townspeople. We don't own a negro, and I don't know that
we ever did own one. Not long ago I asked Colonel Anderson a lot of
questions about the matter. He says the census this year gives Virginia
one million and fifty thousand white people, and of these the fifty
thousand hold slaves and the one million don't. The fifty thousand's
mostly in the tide-water counties, too,--mighty little of it on this
side the Blue Ridge! Ain't anybody ever accused Virginians of not being
good to servants! and it don't take more'n half an eye to see that the
servants love their white people. For slavery itself, I ain't
quarrelling for it, and neither was Colonel Anderson. He said it was
abhorrent in the sight of God and man. He said the old House of
Burgesses used to try to stop the bringing in of negroes, and that the
Colony was always appealing to the king against the traffic. He said
that in 1778, two years after Virginia declared her Independence, she
passed the statute prohibiting the slave trade. He said that she was the
first country in the civilized world to stop the trade--passed her
statute thirty years before England! He said that all our great
Revolutionary men hated slavery and worked for the emancipation of the
negroes who were here; that men w