She saw that the happenings of the morning had had the effect of deepening a contemptuous prejudice into hatred, and she felt that her child’s school life was to be embittered by the harshest of maltreatment.

No restraint was put upon the flogging of colored children by their white teachers, and in Belton’s case his mother expected the worst.  During the whole week she revolved the matter in her mind.  There was a conflict in her bosom between her love and her ambition.  Love prompted her to return and take her son away from school.  Ambition bade her to let him stay.  She finally decided to submit the whole matter to her parson, whom she would invite to dinner on the coming Sunday.

The Sabbath came and Mrs. Piedmont aroused her family bright and early, for the coming of the parson to take dinner was a great event in any negro household.  The house was swept as clean as a broom of weeds tied together could make it.  Along with the family breakfast, a skillet of biscuits was cooked and a young chicken nicely baked.

Belton was very active in helping his mother that morning, and she promised to give him a biscuit and a piece of chicken as a reward after the preacher was through eating his dinner.  The thought of this coming happiness buoyed Belton up, and often he fancied himself munching that biscuit and biting that piece of chicken.  These were items of food rarely found in that household.

Breakfast over, the whole family made preparations for going to Sunday school.  Preparations always went on peacefully until it came to combing hair.  The older members of the family endured the ordeal very well; but little “Lessie” always screamed as if she was being tortured, and James Henry received many kicks and scratches from Belton before he was through combing Belton’s hair.

The Sunday school and church were always held in the day-school building.  The Sunday school scholars were all in one class and recited out of the “blue back spelling book.”  When that was over, members of the school were allowed to ask general questions on the Bible, which were answered by anyone volunteering to do so.  Everyone who had in any way caught a new light on a passage of scripture endeavored, by questioning, to find out as to whether others were as wise as he, and if such was not the case, he gladly enlightened the rest.

The Sunday school being over, the people stood in groups on the ground surrounding the church waiting for the arrival of the parson from his home, Berryville, a town twelve miles distant.  He was pastor of three other churches besides the one at Winchester, and he preached at each one Sunday in the month.  After awhile he put in his appearance.  He was rather small in stature, and held his head somewhat to one side and looked at you with that knowing look of the parrot.  He wore a pair of trousers that had been black, but were now sleet from much wear.  They lacked two inches of reaching down to the feet of his high-heeled boots.  He had on a long linen cluster that reached below his knees.  Beneath this was a faded Prince Albert coat and a vest much too small.  On his head there sat, slightly tipped, a high-topped beaver that seemed to have been hidden between two mattresses all the week and taken out and straightened for Sunday wear.  In his hand he held a walking cane.