"This was Lincoln's position and is the position of nine-tenths of the voters of his party. It is insanity to believe that the Anglo-Saxon race at the North can ever be so blinded by passion that they can assume any other position.

        "Slavery is dead for all time. It would have been destroyed whatever the end of the war. I know some of the secrets of the diplomatic history of the Confederacy. General Lee asked the government at Richmond to enlist 200,000 negroes to defend the South, which he declared was their country as well as ours, and grant them freedom on enlistment. General Lee's request was ultimately accepted as the policy of the Confederacy though too late to save its waning fortunes. Not only this, but the Confederate government sent a special ambassador to England and France and offered them the pledge of the South to emancipate every slave in return for the recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. But when the ambassador arrived in Europe, the lines of our army had been so broken, the governments were afraid to interfere.

        "The man who tells you that your old masters are your enemies and may try to reinslave you is a wilful and malicious liar."

        "Hear dat, folks!" yelled old Reuben as he waved his arm grandly toward the crowd.

        "To the white people here to-day, I say be of good cheer. Let politics alone for awhile and build up your ruined homes. You have boundless wealth in your soil. God will not forget to send the rain and the dew and the sun. You showed yourselves on a hundred fields ready to die for your country. Now I ask you to do

something braver and harder. Live for her when it is hard to live. Let cowards run, but let the brave stand shoulder to shoulder and build up the waste places till our country is once more clothed in wealth and beauty."

        The General bowed in closing to a round of applause. His soldiers were delighted with his speech and his old slaves revelled in it with personal pride. But the rank and file of the negroes were puzzled. He did not preach the kind of doctrine they wished to hear. They had hoped freedom meant eternal rest, not work. They had dreamed of a life of ease with government rations three times a day, and old army clothes to last till they put on the white robes above and struck their golden harps in paradise. This message the General brought was painful to their newly awakened imaginations.

        As the General passed through the crowd he met the Ex-Provisional Governor, Amos Hogg, busy with the organising work of his Leagues.

        "Glad to see you General," said Hogg extending his hand with a smile on his leathery face.

        "Well, how are you, Amos, since Macon pulled your wool?"

        "Never felt better in my life, General. I want a few minutes' talk with you."

        "All right, what is it?"

        "General, you're a progressive man. Come, you're flirting with the enemy. The truly loyal men must get together to rescue the state from the rebels who have it again under their heel."

        "So Macon's a rebel because he licked you?"

        "You know the rebel crowd are running this state," said Hogg.

        "Why, Hogg you were the biggest fool Secessionist I ever saw, and Macon and I were staunch Union men.

We had to fight you tooth and nail. You talk about the truly loyal!"

        "Yes but, General, I've repented. I've got my face turned toward the light."

        "Yes, I see,--the light that shines in the Governor's Mansion."

        "I don't deny it. 'Great men choose greater sins, ambition's mine.' Come into this Union movement with me, Worth, and I'll make you the next Governor."

        "I'll see you in hell first. No, Amos, we don't belong to the same breed. You were a Secessionist as long as it paid. When the people you had misled were being overwhelmed with ruin, and it no longer paid, you deserted and became 'loyal' to get an office. Now you're organising the negroes, deserters, and criminals into your secret oath-bound societies. Union men when the war came fought on one side or the other, because a Union man was a man, not a coward. If he felt his state claimed his first love, he fought for his native soil. The gang of plugs you are getting together now as 'truly loyal' are simply cowards, deserters, and common criminals who claim they were persecuted as Union men. It's a weak lie."

        "We'll win," urged Hogg.

        "Never!" the General snorted, and angrily turned on his heel. Before leaving he wheeled suddenly, faced Hogg and said,

        "Go on with your fool societies. You are sowing the wind. There'll be a lively harvest. I am organising too. I'm organising a cotton mill, rebuilding our burned factory, borrowing money from the Yankees who licked us to buy machinery and give employment to thousands of our poor people. That's the way to save the state. We've got water power enough to turn the wheels of the world."

        "You'll need our protection in the fight that's coming," replied Hogg, with a straight look that meant much.

        The General was silent a moment. Then he shook his fist in Hogg's face and slowly said,

        "Let me tell you something. When I need protection I'll go to headquarters. I've got Yankee money in my mills and I can get more if I need it. You lay your dirty claws on them and I'll break your neck."

CHAPTER X

THE MAN OR BRUTE IN EMBRYO

        TWO months later General Worth, while busy rebuilding his mills at Independence, had served on him a summons to appear before the Agent of the Freedman's Bureau at Hambright and answer the charge of using "abusive language" to a freedman.

        The particular freedman who desired to have his feelings soothed by law was a lazy young negro about sixteen years old whom the General had ordered whipped and sent from the stables into the fields on one occasion during the war while on a visit to his farm. Evidently the boy had a long memory.

        "Now don't that beat the devil!" exclaimed the General.

        "What is it?" asked his foreman.

        "I've got to leave my work, ride on an old freight train thirty miles, pull through twenty more miles of red mud in a buggy to get to Hambright, and lose four days, to answer such a charge as that before some little wizen-eyed skunk of a Bureau Agent. My God, it's enough to make a Union man remember Secession with regrets!"

        "My stars, General, we can't get along without you now when we are getting this machinery in place. Send a lawyer," growled the foreman.

        "Can't do it, John--I'm charged with a crime."

        "Well, I'll swear!"

        Do the best you can, I'll be back in four days, if

I don't kill a nigger!" said the General with a smile. "I've got a settlement to make with the farm hands anyhow."

        There was no help for it. When the court convened, and the young negro saw the face of his old master red with wrath, his heart failed him. He fled the town and there was no accusing witness.

        The General gazed at the Agent with cold contempt and never opened his mouth in answer to expressions of regret at the fiasco.

        A few moments later he rode up to the gate of his farm house on the river hills about a mile out of town. A strapping young fellow of fifteen hastened to open the gate.

        "Well, Allan, my boy, how are you?"

        "First rate, General. We're glad to see you! but we didn't make a half crop, sir, the niggers were always in town loafing around that Freedman's Bureau, holding meetings all night and going to sleep in the fields."

        "Well, show me the books," said the General as they entered the house.

        The General examined the accounts with care and then looked at young Allan McLeod for a moment as though he had made a discovery.

        "Young man, you've done this work well."

        "I tried to, sir. If the niggers dispute anything, I fixed that by making the store-keepers charge each item in two books, one on your account, and one on an account kept separate for every nigger."

        "Good enough. They'll get up early to get ahead of you."

        "I'm afraid they are going to make trouble at the Bureau, sir. That Agent's been here holding Union League meetings two or three nights every week, and he's got every nigger under his thumb."

        "The dirty whelp!" growled the General.

        "If you can see me out of the trouble, General, I'd like to jump on him and beat the life out of him next time he comes out here!"

        The General frowned.

        "Don't you touch him,--any more than you would a pole cat. I've trouble enough just now."

        "I could knock the mud out of him in two minutes, if you say the word," said Allan eagerly.

        "Yes, I've no doubt of it." The General looked at him thoughtfully.

        He was a well knit powerful youth just turned his fifteenth birthday. He had red hair, a freckled face, and florid complexion. His features were regular and pleasing, and his stalwart muscular figure gave him a handsome look that impressed one with indomitable physical energy. His lips were full and sensuous, his eyebrows straight, and his high forehead spoke of brain power as well as horse power.

        He had a habit of licking his lips and running his tongue around inside of his cheeks when he saw anything or heard anything that pleased him that was far from intellectual in its suggestiveness. When he did this one could not help feeling that he was looking at a young well fed tiger. There was no doubt about his being alive and that he enjoyed it. His boisterous voice and ready laughter emphasised this impression.

        "Allan, my boy," said the General when he had examined his accounts, "if you do everything in life as well as you did these books, you'll make a success."

        "I'm going to do my best to succeed, General. I'll not be a poor white man. I'll promise you that."

        "Do you go to church anywhere?"

        "No sir, Maw's not a member of any church, and it's so far to town I don't go."

        "Well, you must go. You must go to the Sunday School too, and get acquainted with all the young folks. I'll speak to Mrs. Durham and get her to look after you."

        "All right, sir, I'll start next Sunday." Allan was feeling just then in a good humour with himself and all the world. The compliment of his employer had so elated him, he felt fully prepared to enter the ministry if the General had only suggested it.

        The following day was appointed for a settlement of the annual contract with the negroes. The Agent of the Freedman's Bureau was the judge before whom the General, his overseer, and clerk of account, and all the negroes assembled.

        If the devil himself had devised an instrument for creating race antagonism and strife he could not have improved on this Bureau in its actual workings. Had clean handed, competent agents been possible it might have accomplished good. These agents were as a rule the riff-raff and trash of the North. It was the supreme opportunity of army cooks, teamsters, fakirs, and broken down preachers who had turned insurance agents. They were lifted from penury to affluence and power. The possibility of corruption and downright theft were practically limitless.

        The Agent at Hambright had been a preacher in Michigan who lost his church because of unsavory rumours about his character. He had eked out a living as a book agent, and then insurance agent. He was a man of some education and had a glib tongue which the negroes readily mistook for inspired eloquence. He assumed great dignity and an extraordinary judicial tone of voice when adjusting accounts.

        General Worth submitted his accounts and they showed that all but six of the fifty negroes employed had a little overdrawn their wages in provisions and clothing.

        "I think there is a mistake, General, in these accounts," said the Rev. Ezra Perkins the Agent.

        "What?" thundered the General.

        "A mistake in your view of the contracts," answered Ezra in his oiliest tone.

        The negroes began to grin and nudge one another, amid exclamations of "Dar now!" "Hear dat!"

        "What do you mean? The contracts are plain. There can be but one interpretation. I agreed to furnish the men their supplies in advance and wait until the end of the year for adjustment after the crops were gathered. As it is, I will lose over five hundred dollars on the farm." The General paused and looked at the Agent with rising wrath.

        "It's useless to talk. I decide that under this contract you are to furnish supplies yourself and pay your people their monthly wages besides. I have figured it out that you owe them a little over fifteen hundred dollars."

        "Fifteen hundred dollars! You thief!"--

        "Softly, softly!--I'll commit you for contempt of court!"

        The General turned on his heel without a word, sprang on his horse, and in a few minutes alighted at the hotel. He encountered the assistant agent of the Bureau on the steps.

        "Did you wish to see me, General?" he asked.

        "No! I'm looking for a man--a Union soldier not a turkey buzzard!" He dashed up to the clerk's desk.

        "Is Major Grant in his room?"

        "Yes, sir."

        "Tell him I want to see him."

        "What can I do for you, General Worth?" asked the Major as he hastened to meet him.

        "Major Grant, I understand you are a lawyer. You

"YOU THIEF!"

are a man of principle, or you wouldn't have fought. When I meet a man that fought us I know I am talking to a man, not a skunk. This greasy sanctified Bureau Agent, has decided that I owe my hands fifteen hundred dollars. He knows it's a lie. But his power is absolute. I have no appeal to a court. He has all the negroes under his thumb and he is simply arranging to steal this money. I want to pay you a hundred dollars as a retainer and have you settle with the Lord's anointed, the Rev. Ezra Perkins for me."

        "With pleasure, General. And it shall not cost you a cent."

        "I'll be glad to pay you, Major. Such a decision enforced against me now would mean absolute ruin. I can't borrow another cent."

        "Leave Ezra with me."

        "Why couldn't they put soldiers into this Bureau if they had to have it, instead of these skunks and wolves?" snorted the General.

        "Well, some of them are a little off in the odour of their records at home, I'll admit," said the Major with a dry smile. "But this is the day of the carrion crow, General. You know they always follow the armies. They attack the wounded as well as the dead. You have my heartfelt sympathy. You have dark days ahead! The death of Mr. Lincoln was the most awful calamity that could possibly have befallen the South. I'm sorry. I've learned to like you Southerners, and to love these beautiful skies, and fields of eternal green. It's my country and yours. I fought you to keep it as the heritage of my children."

        The General's eyes filled with tears and the two men silently clasped each other's hands.

        "Send in your accounts by your clerk. I'll look them

over to-night and I've no doubt the Honourable Reverend Ezra Perkins will see a new light with the rising of tomorrow's sun."

        And Ezra did see a new light. As the Major cursed him in all the moods and tenses he knew, Ezra thought he smelled brimstone in that light.

        "I assure you, Major, I'm sorry the thing happened. My assistant did all the work on these papers. I hadn't time to give them personal attention," the Agent apologised in his humblest voice.

        "You're a liar. Don't waste your breath."

        Ezra bit his lips and pulled his Mormon whiskers.

        "Write out your decision now--this minute-- confirming these accounts in double quick order, unless you are looking for trouble."

        And Ezra hastened to do as he was bidden.

        The next day while the General was seated on the porch of the little hotel discussing his campaigns with Major Grant, Tom Camp sent for him.

        Tom took the General round behind his house, with grave ceremony.

        "What are you up to, Tom?"

        "Show you in a minute! I wish I could make you a handsomer present, General, to show you how much I think of you. But I know yer weakness anyhow. There's the finest lot er lightwood you ever seed."

        Tom turned back some old bagging and revealed a pile of fat pine chips covered with rosin, evidently chipped carefully out of the boxed place of live pine trees.

        The General had two crochets, lightwood and water-power. When he got hold of a fine lot of lightwood suitable for kindling fires, he would fill his closet with it, conceal it under his bed, and sometimes under his mattress.

He would even hide it in his bureau drawers and wardrobe and take it out in little bits like a miser.

        "Lord Tom, that beats the world!"

        "Ain't it fine? Just smell?"

        "Rosin on every piece! Tom, you cut every tree on your place and every tree in two miles clean to get that. You couldn't have made me a gift I would appreciate more. Old boy, if there's ever a time in your life that you need a friend, you know where to find me."

        "I knowed ye'd like it!" said Tom with a smile.

        "Tom, you're a man after my own heart. You're feeling rich enough to make your General a present when we are all about to starve. You're a man of faith. So am I. I say keep a stiff upper lip and peg away. The sun still shines, the rains refresh, and water runs down hill yet. That's one thing Uncle Billy Sherman's army couldn't do much with when they put us to the test of fire. He couldn't burn up our water power. Tom, you may not know it, but I do--we've got water power enough to turn every wheel in the world. Wait till we get our harness on it and make it spin and weave our cotton,--we'll feed and clothe the human race. Faith's my motto. I can hardly get enough to eat now, but better times are coming. A man's just as big as his faith. I've got faith in the South. I've got faith in the good will of the people of the North. Slavery is dead. They can't feel anything but kindly toward an enemy that fought as bravely and lost all. We've got one country now and it's going to be a great one."

        "You're right, General, faith's the word."

        "Tom, you don't know how this gift from you touches me."

        The General pressed the old soldier's hand with feeling. He changed his orders from a buggy to a two-horse team that could carry all his precious lightwood.

He filled the vehicle, and what was left he packed carefully in his valise.

        He stopped his team in front of the Baptist parsonage to see Mrs. Durham about Allan McLeod.

        "Delighted to see you, General Worth. It's refreshing to look into the faces of our great leaders, if they are still outlawed as rebels by the Washington government."

        "Ah, Madam, I need not say it is refreshing to see you, the rarest and most beautiful flower of the old South in the days of her wealth and pride! And always the same!" The General bowed over her hand.

        "Yes, I haven't surrendered yet."

        "And you never will," he laughed.

        "Why should I? They've done their worst. They have robbed me of all. I've only rags and ashes left."

        "Things might still be worse, Madam."

        "I can't see it. There is nothing but suffering and ruin before us. These ignorant negroes are now being taught by people who hate or misunderstand us. They can only be a scourge to society. I am heart-sick when I try to think of the future!"

        There was a mist about her eyes that betrayed the deep emotion with which she uttered the last sentence.

        She was a queenly woman of the brunette type with full face of striking beauty surmounted by a mass of rich chestnut hair. The loss of her slaves and estate in the war had burned its message of bitterness into her soul. She had the ways of that imperious aristocracy of the South that only slavery could nourish. She was still uncompromising upon every issue that touched the life of the past.

        She believed in slavery as the only possible career for a negro in America. The war had left her cynical on the future of the new "Mulatto" nation as she called it, born in its agony. Her only child had died during the

war, and this great sorrow had not softened but rather hardened her nature.

        Her husband's career as a preacher was now a double cross to her because it meant the doom of eternal poverty. In spite of her love for her husband and her determination with all her opposite tastes to do her duty as his wife, she could not get used to poverty. She hated it in her soul with quiet intensity.

        The General was thinking of all this as he tried to frame a cheerful answer. Somehow he could not think of anything worth while to say to her. So he changed the subject.

        "Mrs. Durham, I've called to ask your interest in your Sunday School in a boy who is a sort of ward of mine, young Allan McLeod."

        "That handsome red-headed fellow that looks like a tiger, I've seen playing in the streets?"

        "Yes, I want you to tame him."

        "Well, I will try for your sake, though he's a little older than any boy in my class. He must be over fifteen."

        "Just fifteen. I'm deeply interested in him. I am going to give him a good education. His father was a drunken Scotchman in my brigade, whose loyalty to me as his chief was so genuine and touching I couldn't help loving him. He was a man of fine intellect and some culture. His trouble was drink. He never could get up in life on that account. I have an idea that he married his wife while on one of his drunks. She is from down in Robeson county, and he told me she was related to the outlaws who have infested that section for years. This boy looks like his mother, though he gets that red hair and those laughing eyes from his father. I want you to take hold of him and civilise him for me."

        "I'll try, General. You know, I love boys."

        "You will find him rude and boisterous at first, but I think he's got something in him."

        "I'll send for him to come to see me Saturday."

        "Thank you, Madam. I must go. My love to Dr. Durham."

        The next Saturday when Mrs. Durham walked into her little parlour to see Allan, the boy was scared nearly out of his wits. He sprang to his feet, stammered and blushed, and looked as though he were going to jump out of the window.

        Mrs. Durham looked at him with a smile that quite disarmed his fears, took his outstretched hand, and held it trembling in hers.

        "I know we will be good friends, won't we?"

        "Yessum," he stammered.

        "And you won't tie any more tin cans to dogs like you did to Charlie Gaston's little terrier, will you? I like boys full of life and spirit, just so they don't do mean and cruel things."

        The boy was ready to promise her anything. He was charmed with her beauty and gentle ways. He thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in the world.

        As they started toward the door, she gently slipped one arm around him, put her hand under his chin and kissed him.

        Then he was ready to die for her. It was the first kiss he had ever received from a woman's lips. His mother was not a demonstrative woman. He never recalled a kiss she had given him. His blood tingled with the delicious sense of this one's sweetness. All the afternoon he sat out under a tree and dreamed and watched the house where this wonderful thing had happened to him.

CHAPTER XI

SIMON LEGREE

        IN the death of Mr. Lincoln, a group of radical politicians, hitherto suppressed, saw their supreme opportunity to obtain control of the nation in the crisis of an approaching Presidential campaign.

        Now they could fasten their schemes of proscription, confiscation, and revenge upon the South.

        Mr. Lincoln had held these wolves at bay during his life by the power of his great personality. But the Lion was dead, and the Wolf, who had snarled and snapped at him in life, put on his skin and claimed the heritage of his power. The Wolf whispered his message of hate, and in the hour of partisan passion became the master of the nation.

        Busy feet had been hurrying back and forth from the Southern states to Washington whispering in the Wolf's ear the stories of sure success, if only the plan of proscription, disfranchisement of whites, and enfranchisement of blacks were carried out.

        This movement was inaugurated two years after the war, with every Southern state in profound peace, and in a life and death struggle with nature to prevent famine. The new revolution destroyed the Union a second time, paralysed every industry in the South, and transformed ten peaceful states into roaring hells of anarchy. We have easily outlived the sorrows of the war. That was a surgery which healed the body. But the

child has not yet been born whose children's children will live to see the healing of the wounds from those four years of chaos, when fanatics blinded by passion, armed millions of ignorant negroes and thrust them into mortal combat with the proud, bleeding, half-starving Anglo-Saxon race of the South. Such a deed once done, can never be undone. It fixes the status of these races for a thousand years, if not for eternity.

        The South was now rapidly gathering into two hostile armies under these influences, with race marks as uniforms-- the Black against the White.

        The Negro army was under the command of a triumvirate, the Carpet-bagger from the North, the native Scalawag and the Negro Demagogue.

        Entirely distinct from either of these was the genuine Yankee soldier settler in the South after the war, who came because he loved its genial skies and kindly people.

        Ultimately some of these Northern settlers were forced into politics by conditions around them, and they constituted the only conscience and brains visible in public life during the reign of terror which the "Reconstruction" régime inaugurated.

        In the winter of 1866 the Union League at Hambright held a meeting of special importance. The attendance was large and enthusiastic.

        Amos Hogg, the defeated candidate for Governor in the last election, now the President of the Federation of "Loyal Leagues," had sent a special ambassador to this meeting to receive reports and give instructions.

        This ambassador was none other than the famous Simon Legree of Red River, who had migrated to North Carolina attracted by the first proclamation of the President, announcing his plan for readmitting the state to the Union. The rumours of his death proved a mistake. He had quit drink, and set his mind on greater vices.

        In his face were the features of the distinguished ruffian whose cruelty to his slaves had made him unique in infamy in the annals of the South. He was now pre-eminently the type of the "truly loyal". At the first rumour of war he had sold his negroes and migrated nearer the border land, that he might the better avoid service in either army. He succeeded in doing this. The last two years of the war, however, the enlisting officers pressed him hard, until finally he hit on a brilliant scheme.

        He shaved clean, and dressed as a German emigrant woman. He wore dresses for two years, did house work, milked the cows and cut wood for a good natured old German. He paid for his board, and passed for a sister, just from the old country.

        When the war closed, he resumed male attire, became a violent Union man, and swore that he had been hounded and persecuted without mercy by the Secessionist rebels.

        He was looking more at ease now than ever in his life. He wore a silk hat and a new suit of clothes made by a fashionable tailor in Raleigh. He was a little older looking than when he killed Uncle Tom on his farm some ten years before, but otherwise unchanged. He had the same short muscular body, round bullet head, light grey eyes and shaggy eyebrows, but his deep chestnut bristly hair had been trimmed by a barber. His coarse thick lips drooped at the corners of his mouth and emphasised the crook in his nose. His eyes, well set apart, as of old, were bold, commanding, and flashed with the cold light of glittering steel. His teeth that once were pointed like the fangs of a wolf had been filed by a dentist. But it required more than the file of a dentist to smooth out of that face the ferocity and cruelty that years of dissolute habits had fixed.

        He was only forty-two years old, but the flabby flesh

under his eyes and his enormous square-cut jaw made him look fully fifty.

        It was a spectacle for gods and men, to see him harangue that Union League in the platitudes of loyalty to the Union, and to watch the crowd of negroes hang breathless on his every word as the inspired Gospel of God. The only notable change in him from the old days was in his speech. He had hired a man to teach him grammar and pronunciation. He had high ambitions for the future.

        "Be of good cheer, beloved!" he said to the negroes. "A great day is coming for you. You are to rule this land. Your old masters are to dig in the fields and you are to sit under the shade and be gentlemen. Old Andy Johnson will be kicked out of the White House or hung, and the farms you've worked on so long will be divided among you. You can rent them to your old masters and live in ease the balance of your life."

        "Glory to God!" shouted an old negro.

        "I have just been to Washington for our great leader, Amos Hogg. I've seen Mr. Sumner, Mr. Stevens and Mr. Butler. I have shown them that we can carry any state in the South, if they will only give you the ballot and take it away from enough rebels. We have promised them the votes in the Presidential election, and they are going to give us what we want."

        "Hallelujah! Amen! Yas Lawd!" The fervent exclamations came from every part of the room.

        After the meeting the negroes pressed around Legree and shook his hand with eagerness--the same hand that was red with the blood of their race.

        When the crowd had dispersed a meeting of the leaders was held.

        Dave Haley, the ex-slave trader from Kentucky who had dodged back and forth from the mountains of his

native state to the mountains of Western North Carolina and kept out of the armies, was there. He had settled in Hambright and hoped at least to get the post-office under the new dispensation.

        In the group was the full blooded negro, Tim Shelby. He had belonged to the Shelbys of Kentucky, but had escaped through Ohio into Canada before the war. He had returned home with great expectations of revolutions to follow in the wake of the victorious armies of the North. He had been disappointed in the programme of kindliness and mercy that immediately followed the fall of the Confederacy; but he had been busy day and night since the war in organising the negroes, in secretly furnishing them arms and wherever possible he had them grouped in military posts and regularly drilled. He was elated at the brilliant prospects which Legree's report from Washington opened.

        "Glorious news you bring us, brother!" he exclaimed as he slapped Legree on the back.

        "Yes, and it's straight."

        "Did Mr. Stevens tell you so?"

        "He's the man that told me."

        "Well, you can tie to him. He's the master now that rules the country," said Tim with enthusiasm.

        "You bet he's runnin' it. He showed me his bill to confiscate the property of the rebels and give it to the truly loyal and the niggers. It's a hummer. You ought to have seen the old man's eyes flash fire when he pulled that bill out of his desk and read it to me."

        "When will he pass it?"

        "Two years, yet. He told me the fools up North were not quite ready for it; and that he had two other bills first, that would run the South crazy and so fire the North that he could pass anything he wanted and hang old Andy Johnson besides."

        "Praise God," shouted Tim, as he threw his arms around Legree and hugged him.

        Tim kept his kinky hair cut close, and when excited he had a way of wrinkling his scalp so as to lift his ears up and down like a mule. His lips were big and thick, and he combed assiduously a tiny moustache which he tried in vain to pull out in straight Napoleonic style.

        He worked his scalp and ears vigourously as he exclaimed, "Tell us the whole plan, brother!"

        "The plan's simple," said Legree. "Mr. Stevens is going to give the nigger the ballot, and take it from enough white men to give the niggers a majority. Then he will kick old Andy Johnson out of the White House, put the gag on the Supreme Court so the South can't appeal, pass his bill to confiscate the property of the rebels and give it to loyal men and the niggers, and run the rebels out."

        "And the beauty of the plan is," said Tim with unction, "that they are going to allow the Negro to vote to give himself the ballot and not allow the white man to vote against it. That's what I call a dead sure thing." Tim drew himself up, a sardonic grin revealing his white teeth from ear to ear, and burst into an impassioned harangue to the excited group. He was endowed with native eloquence, and had graduated from a college in Canada under the private tutorship of its professors. He was well versed in English History. He could hold an audience of negroes spell bound, and his audacity commanded the attention of the boldest white man who heard him.

        Legree, Perkins and Haley cheered his wild utterances and urged him to greater flights.

        He paused as though about to stop when Legree, evidently surprised and delighted at his powers said, "Go on! Go on!"

        "Yes, go on," shouted Perkins. "We are done with race and colour lines."

        A dreamy look came to Tim's eyes as he continued,

        "Our proud white aristocrats of the South are in a panic it seems. They fear the coming power of the Negro. They fear their Desdemonas may be fascinated again by an Othello! Well, Othello's day has come at last. If he has dreamed dreams in the past his tongue dared not speak, the day is fast coming when he will put these dreams into deeds, not words.

        "The South has not paid the penalties of her crimes. The work of the conqueror has not yet been done in this land. Our work now is to bring the proud low and exalt the lowly. This is the first duty of the conqueror.

        "The French Revolutionists established a tannery where they tanned the hides of dead aristocrats into leather with which they shod the common people. This was France in the eighteenth century with a thousand years of Christian culture.

        "When the English army conquered Scotland they hunted and killed every fugitive to a man, tore from the homes of their fallen foes their wives, stripped them naked, and made them follow the army begging bread, the laughing stock and sport of every soldier and camp follower! This was England in the meridian of Anglo-Saxon intellectual glory, the England of Shakespeare who was writing Othello to please the warlike populace.

        "I say to my people now in the language of the inspired Word, 'All things are yours!' I have been drilling and teaching them through the Union League, the young and the old. I have told the old men that they will be just as useful as the young. If they can't carry a musket they can apply the torch when the time comes. And they are ready now to answer the call of the Lord!"

        They crowded around Tim and wrung his hand.

        * * * * *

        Early in 1867, two years after the war, Thaddeus Stevens passed through Congress his famous bill destroying the governments of the Southern states, and dividing them into military districts, enfranchising the whole negro race, and disfranchising one-fourth of the whites. The army was sent back to the South to enforce these decrees at the point of the bayonet. The authority of the Supreme Court was destroyed by a supplementary act and the South denied the right of appeal. Mr. Stevens then introduced his bill to confiscate the property of the white people of the South. The negroes laid down their hoes and plows and began to gather in excited meetings. Crimes of violence increased daily. Not a night passed but that a burning barn or home wrote its message of anarchy on the black sky.

        The negroes refused to sign any contracts to work, to pay rents, or vacate their houses on notice even from the Freedman's Bureau.

        The negroes on General Worth's plantation, not only refused to work, or move, but organised to prevent any white man from putting his foot on the land.

        General Worth procured a special order from the headquarters of the Freedman's Bureau for the district located at Independence. When the officer appeared and attempted to serve this notice, the negroes mobbed him.

        A company of troops were ordered to Hambright, and the notice served again by the Bureau official accompanied by the Captain of this company.

        The negroes asked for time to hold a meeting and discuss the question. They held their meeting and gathered fully five hundred men from the neighbourhood, all armed with revolvers or muskets. They asked Legree and Tim Shelby to tell them what they should do. There was no

uncertain sound in what Legree said. He looked over the crowd of eager faces with pride and conscious power.

        "Gentlemen, your duty is plain. Hold your land. It's yours. You've worked it for a lifetime. These officers here tell you that old Andy Johnson has pardoned General Worth and that you have no rights on the land without his contract. I tell you old Andy Johnson has no right to pardon a rebel, and that he will be hung before another year. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and B. F. Butler are running this country. Mr. Stevens has never failed yet on anything he has set his hand. He has promised to give you the land. Stick to it. Shake your fist in old Andy Johnson's face and the face of this Bureau and tell them so."

        "Dat we will!" shouted a negro woman, as Tim Shelby rose to speak.

        "You have suffered," said Tim. "Now let the white man suffer. Times have changed. In the old days the white man said,

        "John, come black my boots!"

        "And the poor negro had to black his boots. I expect to see the day when I will say to a white man, "Black my boots!" And the white man will tip his hat and hurry to do what I tell him."

        "Yes, Lawd! Glory to God! Hear dat now!"

        "We will drive the white men out of this country. That is the purpose of our friends at Washington. If white men want to live in the South they can become our servants. If they don't like their job they can move to a more congenial climate. You have Congress on your side, backed by a million bayonets. There is no President. The Supreme Court is chained. In San Domingo no white man is allowed to vote, hold office, or hold a foot of land. We will make this mighty South a more glorious San Domingo."

        A frenzied shout rent the air. Tim and Legree were carried on the shoulders of stalwart men in triumphant procession with five hundred crazy negroes yelling and screaming at their heels.

        The officers made their escape in the confusion and beat a hasty retreat to town. They reported the situation to headquarters, and asked for instructions.

CHAPTER XII

RED SNOW DROPS

        THE spirit of anarchy was in the tainted air. The bonds that held society were loosened. Government threatened to become organised crime instead of the organised virtue of the community.

        The report of crimes of unusual horror among the ignorant and the vicious began now to startle the world.

        The Rev. John Durham on his rounds among the poor discovered a little negro boy whom the parents had abandoned to starve. His father had become a drunken loafer at Independence and the Freedman's Bureau delivered the child to his mother and her sister who lived in a cabin about two miles from Hambright, and ordered them to care for the boy.

        A few days later the child had disappeared. A search was instituted, and the charred bones were found in an old ash heap in the woods near this cabin. The mother had knocked him in the head and burned the body in a drunken orgie with dissolute companions.

        The sense of impending disaster crushed the hearts of thoughtful and serious people. One of the last acts of Governor Macon, whose office was now under the control of the military commandant at Charleston, South Carolina, was to issue a proclamation, appointing a day of fasting and prayer to God for deliverance from the ruin that threatened the state under the dominion of Legree and the negroes.

        It was a memorable day in the history of the people.

In many places they met in the churches the night before, and held all-night watches and prayer meetings. They felt that a pestilence worse than the Black Death of the Middle Ages threatened to extinguish civilization.

        The Baptist church at Hambright was crowded to the doors with white-faced women and sorrowful men.

        About ten o'clock in the morning, pale and haggard from a sleepless night of prayer and thought, the Preacher arose to address the people. The hush of death fell as he gazed silently over the audience for a moment. How pale his face! They had never seen him so moved with passions that stirred his inmost soul. His first words were addressed to God. He did not seem to see the people before him.

        "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

        "Before the mountains were brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God!"

        The people instinctively bowed their heads, fired by the subtle quality of intense emotion the tones of his voice communicated, and many of the people were already in tears.

        "Thou turnest man to destruction: and sayest, return, ye children of men."

        "Who knowest the power of shine anger?"

        "Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants."

        "Beloved," he continued, "it was permitted unto your fathers and brothers and children to die for their country. You must live for her in the black hour of despair. There will be no roar of guns, no long lines of gleaming bayonets, no flash of pageantry or martial music to stir your souls.

        "You are called to go down, man by man, alone, naked and unarmed in the blackness of night and fight with the powers of hell for your civilization.

        "You must look this question squarely in the face. You are to be put to the supreme test. You are to stand at the judgment bar of the ages and make good your right to life. The attempt is to be deliberately made to blot out Anglo-Saxon society and substitute African barbarism.

        "A few years ago a Southern Representative in a stupid rage knocked Charles Sumner down with a cane and cracked his skull. Now it is this poor cracked brain, mad with hate and revenge, that is attempting to blot the Southern states from the map of the world and build Negro territories on their ruins. In the madness of party passions, for the first time in history, an anarchist, Thaddeus Stevens, has obtained the dictatorship of a great Constitutional Government, hauled down its flag and nailed the Black Flag of Confiscation and Revenge to its masthead.

        "The excuse given for this, that the lawmakers of the South attempted to reinslave the Negro by their enactments against vagrants and provisions for apprenticeship, is so weak a lie, it will not deserve the notice of a future historian. Every law passed on these subjects since the abolition of slavery was simply copied from the codes of the Northern states where free labour was the basis of society.

        "Lincoln alone, with his great human heart and broad statesmanship could have saved us. But the South had no luck. Again and again in the war, victory was within her grasp, and an unseen hand snatched it away. In the hour of her defeat the bullet of a madman strikes down the great President, her last refuge in ruin!

        "God alone is our help. Let us hold fast to our faith

in Him. We can only cry with aching hearts in the language of the Psalmist of old, 'How long, O Lord? how long!'

        "The voices of three men now fill the world with their bluster--Charles Sumner, a crack-brained theorist; Thaddeus Stevens, a clubfooted misanthrope, and B. F. Butler, a triumvirate of physical and mental deformity. Yet they are but the cracked reeds of a great organ that peals forth the discord of a nation's blind rage. When the storm is past, and reason rules passion, they will be flung into oblivion. We must bend to the storm. It is God's will."

        The people left the church with heavy hearts. They were hopelessly depressed. In the afternoon, as the churches were being slowly emptied, groups of negroes stood on the corners talking loudly and discussing the meaning of this new Sunday so strangely observed. It began to snow. It was late in March and this was an unusual phenomenon in the South.

        The next morning the earth was covered with four inches of snow, that glistened in the sun with a strange reddish hue. On examination it was found that every snow drop had in it a tiny red spot that looked like a drop of blood! Nothing of the kind had ever been seen before in the history of the world, so far as any one knew.

        This freak of nature seemed a harbinger of sure and terrible calamity. Even the most cultured and thoughtful could not shake off the impression it made.

        The Preacher did his best to cheer the people in his daily intercourse with them. His Sunday sermons seemed in these darkest days unusually tender and hopeful. It was a marvel to those who heard his bitter and sorrowful speech on the day of fasting and prayer, that he could preach such sermons as those which followed.

        Occasionally old Uncle Joshua Miller would ask him to preach for the negroes in their new church on Sunday afternoons. He always went, hoping to keep some sort of helpful influence over them in spite of their new leaders and teachers. It was strange to watch this man shake hands with these negroes, call them familiarly by their names, ask kindly after their families, and yet carry in his heart the presage of a coming irreconcilable conflict. For no one knew more clearly than he, that the issues were being joined from the deadly grip of that conflict of races that would determine whether this Republic would be Mulatto or Anglo-Saxon. Yet at heart he had only the kindliest feelings for these familiar dusky faces now rising a black storm above the horizon, threatening the existence of civilised society, under the leadership of Simon Legree, and Mr. Stevens.

        It seemed a joke sometimes as he thought of it, a huge, preposterous joke, this actual attempt to reverse the order of nature, turn society upside down, and make a thick-lipped, flat-nosed negro but yesterday taken from the jungle, the ruler of the proudest and strongest race of men evolved in two thousand years of history. Yet when he remembered the fierce passions in the hearts of the demagogues who were experimenting with this social dynamite, it was a joke that took on a hellish, sinister meaning.

CHAPTER XIII

DICK

        WHEN Charlie Gaston reached his home after a never-to-be-forgotten day in the woods with the Preacher, he found a ragged little dirt-smeared negro boy peeping through the fence into the woodyard.

        "What you want?" cried Charlie.

        "Nuttin!"

        "What's your name?"

        "Dick."

        "Who's your father?"

        "Haint got none. My mudder say she was tricked, en I'se de trick!" he chuckled and walled his eyes.

        Charlie came close and looked him over. Dick giggled and showed the whites of his eyes.

        "What made that streak on your neck?"

        "Nigger done it wid er axe."

        "What nigger?"

        "Low life nigger name er Amos what stays roun' our house Sundays."

        "What made him do it?"

        "He low he wuz me daddy, en I sez he wuz er liar, en den he grab de axe en try ter chop me head off."

        "Gracious, he 'most killed you!"

        "Yassir, but de doctor sewed me head back, en hit grow'd."

        "Goodness me!"

        "Say!" grinned Dick.

        "What?"

        "I likes you."

        "Do you?"

        "Yassir, en I aint gwine home no mo'. I done run away, en I wants ter live wid you."

        "Will you help me and Nelse work?"

        "Dat I will. I can do mos' anyting. You ax yer Ma fur me, en doan let dat nigger Nelse git holt er me."

        Charlie's heart went out to the ragged little waif. He took him by the hand, led him into the yard, found his mother, and begged her to give him a place to sleep and keep him.

        His mother tried to persuade him to make Dick go back to his own home. Nelse was loud in his objections to the new comer, and Aunt Eve looked at him as though she would throw him over the fence.

        But Dick stuck doggedly to Charlie's heels.

        "Mama dear, see, they tried to cut his head off with an axe," cried the boy, and he wheeled Dick around and showed the terrible scar across the back of his neck.

        "I spec hits er pity dey didn't cut hit clean off," muttered Nelse.

        "Mama, you can't send him back to be killed!"

        "Well, darling, I'll see about it to-morrow."

        "Come on Dick, I'll show you where to sleep!"

        The next day Dick's mother was glad to get rid of him by binding him legally to Mrs. Gaston, and a lonely boy found a playmate and partner in work, he was never to forget.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NEGRO UPRISING

        THE summer of 1867! Will ever a Southern man or woman who saw it forget its scenes? A group of oath-bound secret societies, The Union League, The Heroes of America, and The Red Strings dominating society, and marauding bands of negroes armed to the teeth terrorising the country, stealing, burning and murdering.

        Labour was not only demoralised, it had ceased to exist. Depression was universal, farming paralysed, investments dead, and all property insecure. Moral obligations were dropping away from conduct, and a gulf as deep as hell and high as heaven opening between the two races.

        The negro preachers openly instructed their flocks to take what they needed from their white neighbours. If any man dared prosecute a thief, the answer was a burned barn or a home in ashes.

        The wildest passions held riot at Washington. The Congress of the United States as a deliberative body under constitutional forms of government no longer existed. The Speaker of the House shook his fist at the President and threatened openly to hang him, and he was arraigned for impeachment for daring to exercise the constitutional functions of his office!

        The division agents of the Freedman's Bureau in the South sent to Washington the most alarming reports, declaring a famine imminent. In reply the vindictive leaders levied a tax of fifteen dollars a bale on cotton,

plunging thousands of Southern farmers into immediate bankruptcy and giving to India and Egypt the mastery of the cotton markets of the world!

        Congress became to the desolate South what Attila, the "Scourge of God" was to civilised Europe.

        The Abolitionists of the North, whose conscience was the fire that kindled the Civil War, rose in solemn protest against this insanity. Their protest was drowned in the roar of multitudes maddened by demagogues who were preparing for a political campaign.

        Late in August Hambright and Campbell county were thrilled with horror at the report of a terrible crime. A whole white family had been murdered in their home, the father, mother and three children in one night, and no clue to the murderers could be found.

        Two days later the rumour spread over the country that a horde of negroes heavily armed were approaching Hambright burning, pillaging and murdering.

        All day terrified women, some walking with babes in their arms, some riding in old wagons and carrying what household goods they could load on them, were hurrying with blanched faces into the town.

        By night five hundred determined white men had answered an alarm bell and assembled in the court house. Every negro save a few faithful servants had disappeared. A strange stillness fell over the village.

        Mrs. Gaston sat in her house without a light, looking anxiously out of the window, overwhelmed with the sense of helplessness. Charlie, frightened by the wild stories he had heard, was trying in spite of his fears to comfort her.

        "Don't cry, Mama!"

        "I'm not crying because I'm afraid, darling, I'm only crying because your father is not here to-night. I can't get used to living without him to protect us."

        "I'll take care of you, Mama--Nelse and me."

        "Where is Nelse?"

        "He's cleaning up the shot gun."

        "Tell him to come here."

        When Nelse approached his Mistress asked,

        "Nelse, do you really think this tale is true?"

        "No, Missy, I doan believe nary word uf it. Same time I'se gettin' ready fur 'em. Ef er nigger come foolin' roun' dis house ter night, he'll t'ink he's run ergin er whole regiment! I hain't been ter wah fur nuttin'."

        "Nelse, you have always been faithful. I trust you implicitly."

        "De Lawd, Missy, dat you kin do! I fight fur you en dat boy till I drap dead in my tracks!"

        "I believe you would."

        "Yessum, cose I would. En I wants dat swo'de er Marse Charles to-night, Missy, en Charlie ter help me sharpen 'im on de grine stone."

        She took the sword from its place and handed it to Nelse. Was there just a shade of doubt in her heart as she saw his black hand close over its hilt as he drew it from the scabbard and felt its edge! If so she gave no sign.

        Charlie turned the grindstone while Nelse proceeded to violate the laws of nations by putting a keen edge on the blade.

        "Nebber seed no sense in dese dull swodes nohow!"

        "Why ain't they sharp, Nelse?"

        "Doan know, honey. Marse Charles tell me de law doan 'low it, but dey sho hain't no law now!"

        "We'll sharpen it, won't we, Nelse?" whispered the boy as he turned faster.

        "Dat us will, honey. En den you des watch me mow niggers ef dey come er prowlin' round dis house!"

        "Did you kill many Yankees in the war, Nelse?"

        "Doan know, honey, spec I did."

        "Are you going to take the gun or the sword?"

        "Bofe um 'em chile. I'se gwine ter shoot er pair er niggers fust, en den charge de whole gang wid dis swode. Hain't nuttin' er nigger's feard uf lak er keen edge. Wish ter God I had a razer long es dis swode! I'd des walk clean froo er whole army er niggers wid guns. Man, hit 'ud des natchelly be er sight! Day'd slam dem guns down en bust demselves open gittin' outen my way!"

        When the sun rose next morning the bodies of ten negroes lay dead and wounded in the road about a mile outside of town. The pickets thrown out in every direction had discovered their approach about eleven o'clock. They were allowed to advance within a mile. There were not more than two hundred in the gang, dozens of them were drunk, and like the Sepoys of India, they were under the command of a white Scalawag. At the first volley they broke and fled in wild disorder. Their leader managed to escape.

        This event cleared the atmosphere for a few weeks; and the people breathed more freely when another company of army regulars marched into the town and camped in the school grounds of the old academy.

CHAPTER XV

THE NEW CITIZEN KING

        OF all the elections ever conducted by the English speaking race the one held under the "Reconstruction" act of 1867 in the South was the most unique.

        Ezra Perkins the agent of the Freedman's Bureau issued a windy proclamation to the new citizens to come forward on a certain day to register and receive their 'elective franchise.'

        The negroes poured into town from every direction from early dawn. Some carried baskets, some carried jugs, and some were pushing wheelbarrows, but most of them had an empty bag. They were packed around the Agency in a solid black mass.

        Nelse laughed until a crowd gathered around him.

        "Lordy, look at dem bags!" he shouted. "En dars ole Ike wid er jug. He's gwine ter take hisen in licker. En bress God dars er fool wid er wheel-barer!" Nelse lay down and rolled with laughter.

        They failed to see the joke, and when the Agency was opened they made a break for the door, trampling each other down in a mad fear that there wouldn't be enough 'elective franchise' to go round!

        The first negro who emerged from the door came with a crestfallen face and an empty bag on his arm.

        He was surrounded by anxious inquirers. "What wuz hit?"

        "Nuffin. Des stan up dar befo' er man wid big whiskers en he make me swar ter export de Constertution er de Nunited States er Nor'f Calliny.

        When Nelse appeared Perkins looked at him a moment and asked,

        "Are you a member of the Union League?"

        "Dat I hain't."

        "Then stand aside and let these men register. If you want to vote you had better join."

        Nelse made no reply, but in a short time he returned with the Rev. John Durham by his side. He was allowed to register, but from that day he was a marked man among his race.

        When the registration closed Perkins was in high glee.

        "We've got 'em, Timothy! It's a dead sure thing!" he cried as he slipped his arm around Tim's shoulder.

        "Will the majority be big?" asked Tim.

        "If it ain't big enough we'll disfranchise more aristocrats and enfranchise the dogs." Tim wondered whether this proposition was altogether flattering.

        During the progress of the campaign, a committee from the organization of the "truly loyal," Ezra Perkins and Dave Haley, called on Tom Camp.

        "Mr. Camp, we want your help as a leader among the poor white people to save the country from these rebel aristocrats who have ruined it," said Ezra.

        "You're barkin' up the wrong tree!" answered Tom dryly.

        "The poor men have got to stand together now and get their rights."

        "Well if I've got to stand with niggers, have 'em hug me and blow their breath in my face, as you fellers are doin', you can count me out!--and if that's all you want with me, you'll find the door open."

        Haley tried his hand.

        "Look here, Camp, we ain't got no hard feelin's agin you, but there's agoin' to be trouble for every rebel in this county who don't git on our side and do it quick."

        "I'm used to trouble pardner," replied Tom.

        "You've got a nice little cabin home and ten acres of land. Fight us, and we will give this house and lot to a nigger."

        "I don't believe it," cried Tom.

        "Come, come," said Perkins, "you're not fool enough to fight us when we've got a dead sure thing, a majority fixed before the voting begins, Congress and the whole army back of us?"

        "I ain't er nigger!" said Tom, doggedly.

        "What's the use to be a fool Camp," cried Haley. "We are just using the nigger to stick the votes in the box. He thinks he's goin' to heaven, but we'll ride him all the way up to the gate and hitch him on the outside. Will you come in with us?"

        "Don't like your complexion!" he answered rising and going toward the door.

        "Then we'll turn you out into the road in less than two years," said Haley as they left.

        "All right!" laughed the old soldier, "I slept on the ground four years, boys."

        When he came back into the room he met his wife with tears in her eyes. "Oh! Tom, I'm afraid they'll do what they say."

        "To tell you the truth, ole woman, I'm afraid so too. But we're in the hands of the Lord. This is His house. If He wants to take it away from me now when I'm crippled and helpless, He knows what's best."

        "I wish you didn't have to go agin 'em."

        "I ain't er nigger, ole gal, and I don't flock with niggers. If God Almighty had meant me to be one He'd have made my skin black."

        On election day no publication of the polling places had been made. Ezra Perkins had in charge the whole county. He consolidated the fifteen voting precincts into three and located these in negro districts. He notified only the members of the secret Leagues where these three voting places were to be found, and other people were allowed to find them on the day of the election as best they could.

        Perkins made himself the poll holder at Hambright though he was a candidate for member of the Constitutional Convention, and the poll holders were allowed to keep the ballots in their possession for three days before forwarding to the General in command at Charleston, South Carolina.

        Scores of negroes, under the instructions of their leaders, voted three times that day. Every negro boy fairly well grown was allowed to vote and no questions asked as to his age.

        Nelse approached the polls attempting to cast a vote against the Rev. Ezra Perkins the poll holder. A crowd of infuriated negroes surrounded him in a moment.

        "Kill 'im! Knock 'im in the head! De black debbil, votin' agin his colour!"

        Nelse threw his big fists right and left and soon had an open space in the edge of which lay a half dozen negroes scrambling to get to their feet.

        The negroes formed a line in front of him and the foremost one said,

        "You try ter put dat vote in de box we bust yo head open!"

        Nelse knocked him down before he got the words well out of him mouth. "Honey, I'se er bad nigger!" he shouted with a grin as he stepped back and started to rush the line.

        Perkins ordered the guard to arrest him.

        As the guard carried Nelse away a crowd of angry negroes followed grinning and cursing.

        "We lay fur you yit, ole hoss!" was their parting word as he disappeared through the jail door.

        That night at the supper table in the hotel at Hambright an informal census of the voters was taken. There were present at the table a distinguished ex-judge, two lawyers, a General, two clergymen, a merchant, a farmer, and two mechanics. The only man of all allowed to vote that day was the negro who waited on the table.

        Thus began the era of a corrupt and degraded ballot in the South that was to bring forth sorrow for generations yet unborn. The intelligence, culture, wealth, social prestige, brains, conscience and the historic institutions of a great state had been thrust under the hoof of ignorance and vice.

        The votes were sent to the military commandant at Charleston and the results announced. The negroes had elected 110 representatives and the whites 10. It was gravely announced from Washington that a "republican form of government" had at last been established in North Carolina.

CHAPTER XVI

LEGREE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE

        THE new government was now in full swing and a saturnalia began. Amos Hogg was Governor, Simon Legree Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Tim Shelby leader of the majority on the floor of the House.

        Raleigh, the quaint little City of Oaks, never saw such an assemblage of law-makers gather in the grey stone Capitol.

        Ezra Perkins, who was a member of the Senate, was frugal in his habits and found lodgings at an unpretentious boarding house near the Capitol square.

        The room was furnished with six iron cots on which were placed straw mattresses and six honourable members of the new Legislature occupied these. They were close enough together to allow a bottle of whiskey to be freely passed from member to member at any hour of the night. They thought the beds were arranged with this in view and were much pleased.

        Ezra was the only man of the crowd who arrived in Raleigh with a valise or trunk. He had a carpet bag. The others simply had one shirt and a few odds and ends tied in red bandana handkerchiefs.

        Three of them had walked all the way to Raleigh and kept in the woods from habit as deserters. The other two rode on the train and handed their tickets to the first stranger they saw on the platform of the car they boarded.

        "What's this for!" said the stranger.

        "Them's our tickets. Ain't you the door keeper?"

        "No, but there ought to be one to every circus. You'll have one when you get to Raleigh."

        The landlady, Mrs. Duke, apologised for the poor beds, when she showed them to their room. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I can't give you softer beds."

        "That's all right M'am! them's fine. Us fellows been sleeping in the woods and in straw stacks so long dodgin' ole Vance's officers, them white sheets is the finest thing we've seed in four years, er more."

        They were humble and made no complaints. But at the end of the week they gathered around the Rev. Ezra Perkins for a grave consultation.

        "When are we goin' ter draw?" said one.

        "Air we ever goin' ter draw?" asked another with sorrow and doubt.

        "What are we here fer ef we cain't draw?" pleaded another looking sadly at Ezra.

        "Gentlemen," answered Ezra, "it will be all right in a little while. The Treasurer is just cranky. We can draw our mileage Monday anyhow."

        At daylight they took their places on the bank's steps, and at ten o'clock when the bank opened, the doors were besieged by a mob of members painfully anxious to draw before it might be too late.

        Next morning there was a disturbance at the breakfast table. The morning paper had in blazing head lines an account of one James"Mileage," who was a Member of the Legislature from an adjoining county thirty-seven miles distant. He had sworn to a mileage record of one hundred and seven dollars.

        "That's an unfortunate mistake, sir" said Perkins.

        "Ten' ter yer own business?" answered James"Mileage."

        "I call it er purty sharp trick," grinned his partner.

        "I call it stealin'," sneered an honourable member, evidently envious.

        And James"Mileage" was his name for all time, but "Mileage" shot a malicious look at the member who had called him a thief.

        The next morning the paper of the Opposition had another biographical sketch on the front page.

        "I see your name in the paper this morning, Mr. Scoggins?" remarked Mrs. Duke, looking pleasantly at the member who had spoken so rudely to James"Mileage" the day before.

        "Well I reckon I'll make my mark down here before it's over," chuckled Scoggins with pride."What do they say about me, M'am?"

        "They say you stole a lot of hogs!" tittered the landlady.

        Mr. Scoggins turned red.

        "Oho, is there another thief in this hon'able body?" sneered James"Mileage."

        "That's all a lie, M'am, 'bout them hogs. I didn' steal 'em. I just pressed 'em from a Secessiner."

        "Jes so," said James"Mileage,""but they say you were a deserter at the time, and not exactly in the service of your country."

        "Ye can't pay no 'tention ter rebel lies ergin Union men!" explained Scoggins, eating faster.

        "Yes, that's so," said James"Mileage," "but there's another funny thing in the paper about you."

        "What's that?" cried Scoggins with new alarm.

        "That Mr. Scoggins met Sherman's army with loud talk about lovin' the Union, but that a mean Yankee officer gave him a cussin' fur not fightin' on one side or the other, took all that bacon he had stolen, hung him

up by the heels, gave him thirty lashes and left him hanging in the air."

        "It's a lie! It's a lie!" bellowed Scoggins.

        "Gentlemen! Gentlemen! we must not have such behaviour at my table!" exclaimed Mrs. Duke.

        And"Hog" Scoggins was his name from that day.

        By the end of the week another painful story was printed about one of this group of statesmen. The newspaper brutally declared that he had been convicted of stealing a rawhide from a neighbour's tanyard. It could not be denied. And then a sad thing happened. The moral sentiment of the little community could not endure the strain. It suddenly collapsed. They laughed at these incidents of the sad past and agreed that they were jokes. They began to call each other James"Mileage," "Hog" Scoggins, and"Rawhide" in the friendliest way, and dared a scornful world to make them feel ashamed of anything!

        But the Rev. Ezra Perkins was pained by this breakdown. He felt that being safely removed two thousand miles from his own past, he might hope for a future.

        "Mrs. Duke," he complained to his landlady,"I will have to ask you to give me a room to myself. I'll pay double. I want quiet where I can read my Bible and meditate occasionally."

        "Certainly Mr. Perkins, if you are willing to pay for it."

        It was so arranged. But this assumption of moral superiority by Perkins grieved "Mileage," "Hog" and "Rawhide," and a coolness sprang up between them, until they found Ezra one night in his place of meditation dead drunk and his room on fire. He had gone to sleep in his chair with his empty bottle by his side, and knocked the candle over on the bed. Then they agreed that forever after they would all stand together, shoulder to

shoulder, until they brought the haughty low and exalted the lowly and the"loyal."

        Tim Shelby early distinguished himself in this august assemblage. His wit and eloquence from the first commanded the admiration of his party.

        When he had fairly established himself as leader, he rose in his seat one day with unusual gravity. His scalp was working his ears with great rapidity showing his excitement.

        He had in his hands a bill on which he had spent months in secret study. He had not even hinted its contents to any of his associates. Under the call for bills his voice rang with deep emphasis,

        "Mr. Speaker!"

        Legree gave him instant recognition.

        "I desire to introduce the following: "A Bill to be Entitled An Act to Relieve Married Women from the Bonds of Matrimony when United to Felons, and to Define Felony."

        A page hurried to the Reading Clerk with his bill.

        The hum of voices ceased. The five or six representatives of the white race left their desks and walked quickly toward the Speaker. The Clerk read in a loud clear voice.

        "The General Assembly of North Carolina do enact:

        I That all citizens of the State who took part in the Rebellion and fought against the Union, or held office in the so called Confederate States of America, shall be held guilty of felony, and shall be forever debarred from noting or holding office."

        II"That the married relations of all such felons are hereby dissolved and their wives absolutely divorced, and said felons shall be forever barred from contracting marriage or living under the same roof with their former wives."

        Instantly four Carpet-bagger members of some education rushed for Tim's seat. "Withdraw that bill, man, quick! My God, are you mad!" they all cried in a breath.

        Tim was dazed by this unexpected turn, and grinned in an obstinate way.

        "I can't see it gentlemen. That bill will kill out the breed of rebels and fix the status of every Southern state for five hundred years. It's just what we need to make this state loyal."

        "You pass that bill and hell will break loose!"

        "How so, brother? Ain't we on top and the rebels on the bottom? Ain't the army here to protect us?" persisted Tim.

        There was a brief consultation among the little group in opposition and the leader said,

        "Mr. Speaker, I move that the bill be at once printed and laid on the desk of the members for consideration."

        Tim was astonished at this move of his enemy. Legree looked at him and waited his pleasure.

        "Mr. Speaker, I withdraw that bill for the present," he said at length.

        That night the wires were hot between Washington and Raleigh, and the entire power of Congress was hurled upon the unhappy Tim. His bill was not only suppressed but the news agencies were threatened and subsidised to prevent accounts of its introduction being circulated throughout the country.

        Tim decided to lay this measure over until Congress was off his hands, and the state's autonomy fully recognised. Then he would dare interference. In the meantime he turned his great mind to financial matters. His success here was overwhelming.

        His first measure was to increase the per diem of the

members from three to seven dollars a day. It passed with a whoop.

        Uncle Pete Sawyer a coal-black fatherly looking old darkey from an Eastern county made himself immortal in that debate.

        "Mistah Speakah!" he bawled drawing himself up with great dignity, and holding a pen in his left hand as though he had been writing. "What do dese white gem'men mean by ezposen dis bill? Ef we dean pay de members enuf, dey des be erbleeged ter steal. Hit aint right, sah, ter fo'ce de members er dis hon'able body ter prowl atter dark when day otter be here 'tendin' ter de business o' de country. En I moves you, sah, Mistah Speakah, dat dese rema'ks er mine be filed in de arkibes er grabity!"

        They were filed and embalmed in the archives of gravity where they will remain a monument to their author and his times.

        As Tim's great financial measures made progress, the members began to wear better clothes, assumed white linen shirts, had their shoes blacked, and put on the airs of overworked statesmen.

        When they had used up all the funds of the state in mileage and per diem, they sold and divided the school fund, railroad bonds worth a half million, for a hundred thousand ready cash. It was soon found that Simon Legree, the Speaker of the House, was the master of financial measures and Tim Shelby was his mouthpiece.

        Legree organised three groups of thieves composed of the officials needed to perfect the thefts in every branch of the government while he retained the leadership of the federated groups. The Treasurer, who was an honest man, was stripped of power by a special act.

        The Capitol Ring merely picked up the odds and ends about the Capitol building. They refurnished the

Legislative Halls. They spent over two hundred thousand dollars for furniture, and when it was appraised, its value was found to be seventeen thousand dollars at the prices they actually paid for it. The Ring stole one hundred and seventy thousand dollars on this item alone.

        An appropriation of three hundred thousand dollars was made for "supplies, sundries and incidentals." With this they built a booth around the statue of Washington at the end of the Capitol and established a bar with fine liquors and cigars for the free use of the members and their friends. They kept it open every day and night during their reign, and in a suite of rooms in the Capitol they established a brothel. From the galleries a swarm of courtesans daily smiled on their favourites on the floor.

        The printing had never cost the state more than eight thousand dollars in any one year. This year it cost four hundred and eighty thousand. Legree drew thousands of warrants on the state for imaginary persons. There were eight pages in the House. He drew pay for one hundred and fifty-six pages. In this way he raised an enormous corruption fund for immediate use in bribing the lawmakers to carry through his schemes.

        The Railroad Ring was his most effective group of brigands.

        They passed bills authorising the issue of twenty-five millions of dollars in bonds, and actually issued and stole fourteen millions, and never built one foot of railroad.

        When Legree's movement was at its high tide, Ezra Perkins sought Uncle Pete Sawyer one night in behalf of a pet measure of his pending in the House.

        Peter was seated by his table counting by the light of a candle three big piles of gold.

        His face was wreathed in smiles.

        "Peter, you seem well pleased with the world tonight?" said Ezra gleefully.

        "Well, brudder, you see dem piles er yaller money?"

        "Yes, it is a fine sight."

        Uncle Pete smacked his lips and grinned from ear to ear.

        "Well, brudder, I tells you. I ben sol' seben times in my life, but 'fore Gawd dat's de fust time I ebber got de money!"

        Uncle Pete dreamed that night that Congress passed a law extending the blessings of a "republican form of government" to North Carolina for forty years and that the Legislature never adjourned.

        But the Legislature finally closed, and in a drunken revel which lasted all night. They had bankrupted the state, destroyed its school funds, and increased its debt from sixteen to forty-two millions of dollars, without adding one cent to its wealth or power.

        Legree then organised a Municipal and County Ring to exploit the towns, cities, and counties, having passed a bill vacating all county and city offices.

        This Ring secured the control of Hambright and levied a tax of twenty-five per cent for municipal purposes! Tom Camp's little home was assessed for eighty-five dollars in taxes. Mrs. Gaston's home was assessed for one hundred and sixty dollars. They could have raised a million as easily as the sum of these assessments.

        It cost the United States government two hundred millions of dollars that year to pay the army required to guard the Legrees and their "loyal" men while they were thus establishing and maintaining "a republican form of government" in the South.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SECOND REIGN OF TERROR

        IT was the bluest Monday the Rev. John Durham ever remembered in his ministry. A long drought had parched the corn into twisted and stunted little stalks that looked as though they had been burnt in a prairie fire. The fly had destroyed the wheat crop and the cotton was dying in the blistering sun of August, and a blight worse than drought, or flood, or pestilence, brooded over the stricken land, flinging the shadow of its Black Death over every home. The tax gatherer of the new "republican form of government," recently established in North Carolina now demanded his pound of flesh.

        The Sunday before had been a peculiarly hard one for the Preacher. He had tried by the sheer power of personal sympathy to lift the despairing people out of their gloom and make strong their faith in God. In his morning sermon he had torn his heart open and given them its red blood to drink. At the night service he could not rally from the nerve tension of the morning. He felt that he had pitiably failed. The whole day seemed a failure black and hopeless.

        All day long the sorrowful stories of ruin and loss of homes were poured into his ear.

        The Sheriff had advertised for sale for taxes two thousand three hundred and twenty homes in Campbell county. The land under such conditions had no value.

It was only a formality for the auctioneer to cry it and knock it down for the amount of the tax bill.

        As he arose from bed with the burden of all this hopeless misery crushing his soul, a sense of utter exhaustion and loneliness came over him.

        "My love, I must go back to bed and try to sleep. I lay awake last night until two o'clock. I can't eat anything," he said to his wife as she announced breakfast.

        "John, dear, don't give up like that."

        "Can't help it."

        "But you must. Come, here is something that will tone you up. I found this note under the front door this morning."

        "What is it?"

        "A notice from some of your admirers that you must leave this county in forty-eight hours or take the consequences."

        He looked at this anonymous letter and smiled.

        "Not such a failure after all, am I?" he mused.

        "I thought that would help you," she laughed.

        "Yes, I can eat breakfast on the strength of that."

        He spread this letter out beside his plate, and read and reread it as he ate, while his eyes flashed with a strange half humourous light.

        "Really, that's fine, isn't it?" "You sower of sedition and rebellion, hypocrite and false prophet. The day has come to clean this county of treason and traitors. If you dare to urge the people to further resistance to authority, there will be one traitor less in this county."

        "That sounds like the voice of a Daniel come to judgment, don't it?"

        "I think Ezra Perkins might know something about it."

        "I am sure of it."

        "Well, I'm duly grateful, it's done for you what your wife couldn't do, cheered you up this morning."

        "That is so, isn't it? It takes a violent poison sometimes to stimulate the heart's action."

        "Now if you will work the garden for me, where I've been watering it the past month, you will be yourself by dinner time."

        "I will. That's about all we've got to eat. I've had no salary in two months, and I've no prospects for the next two months."

        He was at work in the garden when Charlie Gaston suddenly ran through the gate toward him. His face was red, his eyes streaming with tears, and his breath coming in gasps.

        "Doctor, they've killed Nelse! Mama says please come down to our house as quick as you can."

        "Is he dead, Charlie?"

        "He's most dead. I found him down in the woods lying in a gully, one leg is broken, there's a big gash over his eye, his back is beat to a jelly, and one of his arms is broken. We put him in the wagon, and hauled him to the house. I'm afraid he's dead now. Oh me!" The boy broke down and choked with sobs.

        "Run, Charlie, for the doctor, and I'll be there in a minute."

        The boy flew through the gate to the doctor's house.

        When the Preacher reached Mrs. Gaston's, Aunt Eve was wiping the blood from Nelse's mouth.

        "De Lawd hab mussy! My po' ole man's done kilt."

        "Who could have done this, Eve?"

        "Dem Union Leaguers. Dey say doy wuz gwine ter kill him fur not jinin' 'em, en fur tryin' ter vote ergin 'em."

        "I've been afraid of it," sighed the Preacher as he felt Nelse's pulse.

        "Yassir, en now dey's done hit. My po' ole man. I wish I'd a been better ter 'im. Lawd Jesus, help me now!"

        Eve knelt by the bed and laid her face against Nelse's while the tears rained down her black face.

        "Aunt Eve, it may not be so bad," said the Preacher hopefully. "His pulse is getting stronger. He has an iron constitution. I believe he will pull through, if there are no internal injuries."

        "Praise God! ef he do git well, I tell yer now, Marse John, I fling er spell on dem niggers bout dis!"

        "I am afraid you can do nothing with them. The courts are all in the hands of these scoundrels, and the Governor of the state is at the head of the Leagues."

        "I doan want no cotes, Marse John, I'se cote ennuf. I kin conjure dem niggers widout any cote."

        The doctor pronounced his injuries dangerous but not necessarily fatal. Charlie and Dick watched with Eve that night until nearly midnight. Nelse opened his eyes, and saw the eager face of the boy, his eyes yet red from crying.

        "I aint dead, honey!" he moaned.

        "Oh! Nelse, I'm so glad!"

        "Doan you believe I gwine die! I gwine ter git eben wid dem niggers 'fore I leab dis worl'."

        Nelse spoke feebly, but there was a way about his saying it that boded no good to his enemies, and Eve was silent. As Nelse improved, Eve's wrath steadily rose.

        The next day she met in the street one of the negroes who had threatened Nelse.

        "How's Mistah Gaston dis mawnin' M'am?" he asked.

        Without a word of warning she sprang on him like a tigress, bore him to the ground, grasped him by the throat and pounded his head against a stone. She would have

choked him to death, had not a man who was passing come to the rescue.

        "Lemme lone, man, I'se doin' de wuk er God!"

        "You're committing murder, woman."

        When the negro got up he jumped the fence and tore down through a corn field, as though pursued by a hundred devils, now and then glancing over his shoulder to see if Eve were after him.

        The Preacher tried in vain to bring the perpetrators of this outrage on Nelse to justice. He identified six of them positively. They were arrested, and when put on trial immediately discharged by the judge who was himself a member of the League that had ordered Nelse whipped.

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