de ordered Eli's name placed on the bills to relieve himself of
all responsibility and worry.

The evidence was conclusive. At least that's what the lawyer, Isaac
Bailey, said. Lin said: "It was boun' to go agin Alfurd. Limpy Bailey
cud make black white an' Squire Wilkinson's agin' evurythin' but the
Methudis' Church."

There were numerous little bills unpaid, including five dollars to the
blind family. Chapters of truths and unfounded rumors, were in the
mouths of the gossips as to how the troupe stranded in West Virginia,
compelled to walk home, traveling as deck passengers on the steamboat.
It even went the rounds that they would have starved if George Warner
had not fed them surreptitiously on their way home.

Alfred was crestfallen. He was ashamed to visit his old haunts in the
town. He evolved plan after plan only to be persuaded by Lin to abandon
them as soon as they were broached to her. The father rubbed salt into
his wounded feelings at every reference he made to the minstrel business
and the lowness of those connected with it, holding Eli up as a terrible
example of what minstrel life would bring a man to.

Berated, brow-beaten, driven to the wall, Alfred answered his father in
kind following one of his most bitter arraignments of show people:
"Father, what are you talking about? Something you know nothing of. Eli
was not a showman, not a minstrel man. He was only with an amateur
minstrel show eight days. Nothing in his associations made him lower
than he was before he left."

"Then why did you go with him?" sternly demanded the parent.

"I wanted to make money."

"Yes, you wanted to make trouble and disgrace for your poor mother and
myself," was the father's rejoinder.

"How sorry I am I did not do differently. How sorry I am that this ever
happened and I planned it all so differently. I felt I was protecting
myself and I'm into it deeper than before." Thus would Alfred reason
with himself.

But the judgment of regret is a silent witness of the heart to the
conviction that some things are inevitable. With Alfred it was a
confession hard to make--another battle lost that seemed won. The words,
"disgrace to the family, to your mother and myself," kept ringing in his
ears and he resolved to leave the town, go to the oil regions, go west,
go anywhere, get rich, come back and make his people retract all their
cruel reflections.

Lin adjured him to "furgit the sore spot; es long es ye pick hit, it'll