Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/342

 presence of mind, they might have saved their army, won some great victory or done something else as notorious, but in this I may be classed as one of the unfortunates who simply lost his head. That is how it was described later, but speaking for myself, when I heard the voice of the man who had secured my wife by coercion and kept her away from me a year; which had caused me to suffer, and turned my existence into a veritable nightmare, the things that passed through my mind during the few moments thereafter are sad to describe.

I heard his voice say again, "Why don't you bring him to the house?" But I could only seem to see her being torn from me, while he, a massive brute, stood over lecturing me, for what he termed, "my sins," but what were merely the ideas of a free American citizen. How could I listen to a lecture from a person with his reputation. This formed in my mind and added to the increasing but suppressed anger. I could see other years passing with nothing to remember my wife by, but the little songs she had sung so often while we were together in Dakota.

The next moment I had taken the receiver from her hand, and called, "Hello, Rev. McCraline," "Hello, Rev. McCraline," in a savage tone. When he had answered, I continued in a more savage