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Uncle Abner afraid. I will not be beaten into submission by vague, inherited terrors. I will not be subservient to things that have a lesser power than I have. I will not yield the control of events to elements that are dead, to laws that are unthinking, or to an influence that cannot change.

"Not all the gods that man has ever worshiped can make things happen to-morrow, but I can make them happen; therefore, I am a god above them. And how shall a god that is greater than these gods give over the dominion of events into their hands?"

"And so, Mansfield," said Abner, "you have been acting just now upon this belief?"

The old man turned his bony face sharply on my uncle.

"Now, Abner," he said, "what do you mean by this Delphic sentence?"

For reply, my uncle extended his arms toward the whitewashed cabin.

"Who is the dead man down there?"

"Randolph can tell you that," said Mansfield.

"I never saw the man until to-day," replied the Justice.

"Eh, Randolph," cried the old man, "do you administer the law and have a memory like that? In midsummer the justices sat at the county seat. Have you forgot that inquisition?"

"I have not," said the Justice. "It was a fool's inquiry. One of Nixon's negro women reported a slave plot to poison the wells and attack the people 292