And the Record was finally beginning to turn a profit. That—not political rhetoric—was the true measure of the sea change, in this town and in cities all over the South. Negroes were at last becoming an economic force. The value of their skilled labor and the power of their pocketbooks would guarantee them greater and greater freedom. Bigotry didn’t have a chance against the dollar.

Carrie had written him from London—all good news and gushing success. He reread the letter three times, not for the words but for the fair curve of her hand, the elegant, looping signature of an irresistible woman. He carried it in his pocket all day. If he closed his eyes, he could hear her full, throaty voice, see the broad Tuscarora Indian features that made her face so beautiful to him. Feeling confident again, he ventured out-of-doors alone to attend a meeting called by the Reverend Kirk to calm the jitters of the Negro community.

Six blocks straight uphill from the train station, five blocks north of Hugh MacRae’s mansion, gaslights were burning at Central Baptist Church. The Reverend J. Allen Kirk, D.D., was vainly trying to bring his boisterous congregation under control. It wasn’t his usual congregation. The church was packed with more men than he had ever seen—men whose wives and daughters and mothers were his usual flock, other men he had never seen before, rough men from the cotton mills, occasional laborers, brothers and cousins from the country, even a few troublemakers up from Charleston and Atlanta. The walls shuddered with the sheer press of human muscle. The heated air wavered over their heads, holding the mutter of troubled voices.

The floorboards flexed under the weight. The whole building seemed to expand and contract with the great collective breathing of the congregation. The building was alive, moving, the flimsy container of a great frightened soul. In all his years of preaching the gospel of the Lord, he had never seen anything like it. Here was the active presence of grace in the world, the physical yearning for salvation, thundering hearts and sweating palms, tearful eyes and a hollow ache in the stomach.

They all felt it. He felt it. God was hovering over his congregation tonight. The Holy Ghost sheltered them under his brilliant wings. He smiled and took a deep breath, then another. The Holy Ghost would give him the words. He would trust to faith to tell them what they needed to hear.

The Reverend Kirk stood in the center of the chancel and listened, holding up one hand for silence. The noise went on.