"promised land" never took him into the direction of the stables,
where the other pickaninnies worried the horses, or into the region of
the hen-coops, where egg-sucking was a common crime.

No boy ever rolled or tumbled in the dirt with a heartier glee than
did Gideon, but no warrior, not even his illustrious prototype
himself, ever kept sterner discipline in his ranks when his followers
seemed prone to overstep the bounds of right. At a very early age his
shrill voice could be heard calling in admonitory tones, caught from
his mother's very lips, "You 'Nelius, don' you let me ketch you
th'owin' at ol' mis' guinea-hens no mo'; you hyeah me?" or "Hi'am, you
come offen de top er dat shed 'fo' you fall an' brek yo' naik all to
pieces."

It was a common sight in the evening to see him sitting upon the low
rail fence which ran before the quarters, his shift blowing in the
wind, and his black legs lean and bony against the whitewashed rails,
as he swayed to and fro, rocking and singing one of his numerous
brothers to sleep, and always his song was of war and victory, albeit
crooned in a low, soothing voice. Sometimes it was "Turn Back
Pharaoh's Army," at others "Jinin' Gideon's Band." The latter was a
favorite, for he seemed to have a proprietary interest in it,
although, despite the martial inspiration of his name, "Gideon's band"
to him meant an aggregation of people with horns and fiddles.

Steve, who was Cassie's man, declared that he had never seen such a
child, and, being quite as religious as Cassie herself, early began to
talk Scripture and religion to the boy. He was aided in this when his
master, Dudley Stone, a man of the faith, began a little Sunday class
for the religiously inclined of the quarters, where the old familiar