CHAPTER V.

BELTON FINDS A FRIEND.


Long before the rifle ball, the cannon shot, and the exploding shell
were through their fiendish task of covering the earth with mortals
slain; while the startled air was yet busy in hurrying to Heaven
the groans of the dying soldier, accompanied as they were by the
despairing shrieks of his loved ones behind; while horrid War, in
frenzied joy, yet waved his bloody sword over the nation's head, and
sought with eager eagle eyes every drop of clotted gore over which he
might exult; in the midst of such direful days as these, there were
those at the North whom the love of God and the eye of faith taught to
leap over the scene of strife to prepare the trembling negro for the
day of freedom, which, refusing to have a dawn, had burst in meridian
splendor upon his dazzled gaze.

Into the southland there came rushing consecrated Christians, men and
women, eager to provide for the negro a Christian education. Those
who stayed behind gathered up hoarded treasures and gladly poured them
into the lap of the South for the same laudable purpose. As a result
of the coming of this army of workers, bearing in their arms millions
of money, ere many years had sped, well nigh every southern state
could proudly boast of one or more colleges where the aspiring negro
might quench has thirst for knowledge.

So when Bernard and Belton had finished their careers at the
Winchester public school, colleges abounded in the South beckoning