“I am, sir,” I said. “And I was wondering,” I went on, “if I might ask Your Reverence something.”

“Oh? What’s that?” he said.

“I was wondering,” I said, “if I might join the Church.”

He looked at me for a moment as if he’d been struck by a thunderbolt.

“You wish to become a member of my congregation?”

“Yessir,” I said.

Well, he didn’t speak for a while, but he just stood there looking at me, in a cold, considering kind of way. When he did answer, his voice was quiet.

“I see you for what you are,” he said. And I, being young and foolish, supposed that this might mean something good for me. “You seek,” he asked me, “to better yourself?”

“Yessir,” I said, very hopeful, and giving him my best smile.

“As I thought,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. And he nodded. “Those who join the congregation,” he said, “do so for love of God, not in hope of any reward.”

Now, on account of living with the van Dyck family, and knowing how their children were raised, I reckoned that I knew a little of the Christian religion. And, forgetting I was only a slave and that he was the dominie, I was disposed to argue.

“But they do it to escape hellfire,” I said.

“No.” It seemed to me that he did not want to have any conversation with me, but being a dominie, he was obliged to give instruction, even to a slave. “It is already predestined who shall go to hell and who shall be saved,” he said. “The godly serve the Lord for His sake, not for their own.” Then he pointed his finger at me. “Submission, young man, is the price of entry to the Church. Do you understand?”

“Yessir,” I said.

“You are not the first slave to imagine that by worshipping at our Church you may open a path to freedom. But it will not be tolerated. We submit to God because He is good. Not to better ourselves.” And now his voice was getting louder, so that a man passing in the street turned to look. “God is not mocked, young man,” he cried to me then, and fairly glared at me before he strode away.

A few days later, the Boss turned to me and said: “I hear that you had conversation with Dominie Cornelius.” And he gave me a strange look.

“Yes, Boss,” I said. But I took care not to speak of religion again, after that.

And soon there were more important things to concern me than the saving of my soul. For that summer, while the Boss was away upriver, the English came.

I was working in the kitchen when Jan came running in with the news.

“Come quickly, Quash,” he calls. “Down to the water. Come and see.”