THE excitement through which Tom Camp had passed in the death of his daughter, and the stirring events connected with it, had been more than his feeble body could endure. He had been stricken with paroxysms of pain and nausea from his old wounds. For three days and nights he had suffered unspeakable agonies. He had borne his pain with stoical indifference.
“Tom, old man, do look at me! You skeer me,” said his wife leaning tenderly over him.
“Oh! I’m all right, Annie.”
“What was you studyin’ about then?”
“I was just a thinkin’ we didn’t kill babies in the war. Them was awful times, but they wuz nothin’ to what we’re goin’ through now. The Lord knows best, but I can’t understand it.”
“Well, don’t talk any more. You’re too weak.”
“I must git up, Annie. Got to git out anyhow. The Sheriff’s goin’ to sell us out to-day, and I want to sorter look ’round once before we go.”
So, leaning on his wife’s arm, he hobbled around the place saying good-bye to its familiar objects. They stopped before the garden gate.
“Don’t go in there, Tom, I can’t stand it,” cried his wife. “When I think of leavin’ that garden I’ve worked so hard on all these years, and that’s give us so many good things to eat, and never failed us the year round, I just feel like it’ll tear my heart out.”
“Do you mind the day we set out these trees, Annie, an’ you, my own purty gal holdin’ ’em fur me while I packed the dirt around ’em, and told you how sweet you wuz?”
“Yes, and I love every twig of ’em. They’ve all helped me in times of need. Oh! Lord, it’s hard to give it up!” She couldn’t keep back the tears.
“Well, now, ole woman, you mustn’t break down. You’re strong and well and I’m all shot to pieces and crippled and no ’count. But the Lord still lives. We’ll get this place back. The Lord’s just trying our faith. He thinks mebbe I’ll give up.”
“You think we can ever get it back?”
“General Worth sent me word he couldn’t do anything now, but to let it go and keep a stiff upper lip. The General ain’t no fool.”
“Surely the Lord can’t let us starve.”
“Starve! I reckon not! The foxes have holes, the birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head, but He never starved. No, God’s in Heaven. I’ll trust Him.”
A mocking bird whose mate had just built her nest to rear a second brood for the season was seated on the topmost branch of a cedar near the house, and singing as though he would fill heaven and earth with the glory of his love.
“Just listen at that bird, Tom!” whispered his wife. “He does sing sweet, don’t he?”
“Oh dear, oh dear, how can I give it all up! I’ve fed that bird and his mate for years. He knows my voice. I can call him down out of that tree. Many a night when you were away in the war he sat close to my window and sang softly to me all night. When I’d wake, I’d hear him singin’ low like he was afraid he’d wake somebody. I’d sit down there by the window and cry for you and dream of your comin’ home till he’d sing me to sleep in the chair. And now we’ve got to leave him. Oh Lord, my heart is broken! I can’t see the way!”
She buried her face on Tom’s shoulder and shook with sobs.
“Hush, hush, honey, we must face trouble. We are used to it.”
“But not this, Tom. It’ll tear my heart out when I have to leave.”
“It can’t be helped, Annie. We’ve got to pay for this nigger government.”
Eleven o’clock was the hour fixed for the sale. At half past ten a crowd of negroes had gathered. There were only two or three white men present, the Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau and some of his henchmen.
They began to inspect the place. Tim Shelby was present, dressed in a suit of broadcloth and a silk hat placed jauntily on his close-cropped scalp.
“That’s a fine orchard, gentlemen,” Tim exclaimed.
“Yes, en dats er fine gyarden,” said a negro standing near.
“Let’s look at the house,” said Tim starting to the door.
Tom stood up in the doorway with a musket in his hand, “Put your foot on that doorstep and I’ll blow your brains out, you flat-nosed baboon!”
Tim paused and bowed with a smile.
“Ain’t the premises for sale, Mr. Camp?”
“Yes, but my family ain’t for inspection by niggers.”
“Just wanted to see the condition of the house, sir,” said Tim still smiling.
“Well, I’m livin’ here yet, and don’t you forget it,” answered Tom with quiet emphasis. Tim walked away laughing.
Tom stepped out of the house, and with his wooden leg marked a dead line around the house about ten feet from each corner. To the crowd that stood near he said in a clear ringing voice as he stood up in the doorway.
“I’ll kill the first nigger that crosses that line.”
There was no attempt to cross it. They did not like the look of Tom’s face as he sat there pale and silent. And they could hear the sobs of his wife inside.
The sale was a brief formality. There was but one bidder, the Honourable Tim Shelby. It was knocked down to Tim for the sum of eighty-five dollars, the exact amount of the tax levy which Legree and his brigands had fixed.
Tim was not buying on his own account. He was the purchasing agent of the subsidiary ring which Legree had organised to hold the real estate forfeited for taxes until a rise in value would bring them millions of profit. They had stolen from the state Treasury the money to capitalise this company. Where it was possible to exact a cash ransom, they always took it and cancelled the tax order, preferring the certainty of good gold in their pockets to the uncertainties of politics.
They tried their best to get a cash ransom of ten thousand dollars for the town of Hambright. But the ruined people could not raise a thousand. So Tim Shelby as the agent of the “Union Land and Improvement Company,” became the owner of farm after farm and home after home.
It was a vain hope that relief could come from any quarter. The red flag of the Sheriff’s auctioneer fluttered from two thousand three hundred and twenty doors in the county. This was over two-thirds of the total.
Those who were saved, just escaped by the skin of their teeth. They sold old jewelry or plate that had been hidden in the war, or they sold their corn and provisions, trusting to their ability to live on dried fruit, berries, walnuts, hickory nuts, and such winter vegetables as they could raise in their gardens.
The Preacher secured for Tom a tumbled-down log cabin on the outskirts of town, with a half-acre of poor red hill land around it, which his wife at once transformed into a garden. She took up the bulbs and flowers that she had tended so lovingly about the door of their old home, and planted them with tears around this desolate cabin. Now and then she would look down at the work and cry. Then she would go bravely back to it. As nobody occupied her old home, she went back and forth until she moved all the jonquils and sweet pinks from the borders of the garden walk, and reset them in the new garden. She moved then her strawberries and rapsberries, and gooseberries, and set her fall cabbage plants. In three weeks she had transformed a desolate red clay lot into a smiling garden. She had watered every plant daily, and Tom had watched her with growing wonder and love.
“Ole woman, you’re an angel!” he cried, “if God had sent one down from the skies she couldn’t have done any more.”
The problem which pressed heaviest of all on the Preacher’s heart in this crisis was how to save Mrs. Gaston’s home.
“If that place is sold next week, my dear,” he said to his wife, “she will never survive.”
“I know it. She is sinking every day. It breaks my heart to look at her.”
“What can we do?”
“I’m sure I can’t tell. We’ve given everything we have on earth except the clothes on our back. I haven’t another piece of jewelry, or even an old dress.”
“The tax and the costs may amount to a hundred and seventy-five dollars. There isn’t a man in this county who has that much money, or I’d borrow it if I had to mortgage my body and soul to do it.”
“I’ll tell you what you might do,” his wife suddenly exclaimed. “Telegraph your old college mate in Boston that you will accept his invitation to supply his pulpit those last two Sundays in August. They will pay you handsomely.”
“It may be possible, but where am I to get the money for a telegram and a ticket?”
“Surely you can borrow some here!”
“I don’t know a man in the county who has it.”
“Then go to the young Commandant of the post here. Tell him the facts. Tell him that a widow of a brave Confederate soldier is about to be turned out of her home because she can’t pay the taxes levied by this infamous negro government. Ask him to loan you the money for the telegram and the ticket.”
The Preacher seized his hat and made his way as fast as possible to the camp. The young Captain heard his story with grave courtesy.
“Certainly, doctor,” he said, “I’ll loan you the forty dollars with pleasure. I wish I could do more to relieve the distress of the people. Believe me, sir, the people of the North do not dream of the awful conditions of the South. They are being fooled by the politicians. I’ll thank God when I am relieved of this job and get home. What has amazed me is that you hot-headed Southern people have stood it thus far. I don’t know a Northern community that would have endured it.”
“Ah, Captain, the people are heartsick of bloodshed, They surrendered in good faith. They couldn’t foresee this. If they had”—
The Preacher paused, his eyes grew misty with tears, and he looked thoughtfully out on the blue mountain peaks that loomed range after range in the distance until the last bald tops were lost in the clouds.
“If General Lee had dreamed of such an infamy being forced on the South two years after his surrender, as this attempt to make the old slaves the rulers of their masters, and to destroy the Anglo-Saxon civilisation of the South—he would have withdrawn his armies into that Appalachian mountain wild and fought till every white man in the South was exterminated.
“The Confederacy went to pieces in a day, not because the South could no longer fight, but because they were fighting the flag of their fathers, and they were tired of it. They went back to the old flag. They expected to lose their slaves and repudiate the dogma of Secession forever. But, they never dreamed of Negro dominion, or Negro deification, of Negro equality and amalgamation, now being rammed down their throats with bayonets. They never dreamed of the confiscation of the desolate homes of the poor and the weak and the brokenhearted. Over two hundred thousand Southern men fought in the Union army in answer to Lincoln’s call—even against their own flesh and blood. But if this program had been announced, every one of the two hundred thousand Southern soldiers who wore the blue, would have rallied around the firesides of the South. This infamy was something undreamed save in the souls of a few desperate schemers at Washington who waited their opportunity, and found it in the nation’s blind agony over the death of a martyred leader.”
The Preacher pressed the Captain’s hand and hastened to tell Mrs. Gaston of his plans. He found her seated pale and wistful at her window looking out on the lawn, now being parched and ruined since Nelse was disabled and could no longer tend it.
Charlie was trying to kiss the tears away from her eyes.
“Mama dear, you mustn’t cry any more!”
“I can’t help it, darling.”
“They can’t take our home away from us. I tore the sign down they nailed on the door, and Dick burned it up!”
“But they will do it, Charlie. The Sheriff will sell it at auction next week, and we will never have a home of our own again.”
Charlie bounded to the door and showed the Preacher in.
“I have good news for you, Mrs. Gaston! I start to Boston to-night to preach two Sundays. I am going to try to borrow the money there to save your home. We will not be too sure till it’s done, but you must cheer up!”
“Oh! doctor, you’re giving me a new lease on life!” she cried, looking up at him through tears of gratitude.
That night the Preacher hurried on his way to Boston.
The days dragged slowly one after another, and still no word came to the anxious waiting woman. It was only two days now until the day fixed for the sale.
She asked the Sheriff to come to see her. He was a brutal illiterate henchman of Legree, who had been appointed to the office to do his bidding. He was a brother of the immortal “Hog” Scoggins, who had represented an adjoining county in the Legislature.
“Mr. Scoggins, I’ve sent for you to ask you to postpone the sale until Dr. Durham returns from Boston. I expect to get the money from him to pay the tax bill.”
“Can’t do it, M’um. They’s er lot er folks comin’ ter bid on the place.”
“But I tell you I’m going to pay the tax bill.”
“Well, M’um, hit’ll have ter be paid afore the time sot, er I’ll be erbleeged to sell.”
“I’m sure Dr. Durham will get the money.”
“Ef he does, hit ’ll be the fust time hit’s happened in this county sence the sales begun.”
In vain she waited for a letter or a telegram from Boston. Charlie went faithfully asking Dave Haley, the postmaster, two or three times on the arrival of each mail.
“I tell ye there’s nothin’ fur ye!” he yelled as he glared at the boy. “Ef ye don’t go way from that winder, I’ll pitch ye out the door!”
The scoundrel had recognised the letter in Dr. Durham’s handwriting and had hidden it, suspecting its contents.
When the day came for the sale Mrs. Gaston tried to face the trial bravely. But it was too much for her. When she saw a great herd of negroes trampling down her flowers, laughing, cracking vulgar jokes, and swarming over the porches, she sank feebly into her chair, buried her face in her hands and gave way to a passionate flood of tears. She was roused by the thumping of heavy feet in the hall, and the unmistakable odour of perspiring negroes. They had begun to ransack the house on tours of inspection. The poor woman’s head drooped and she fell to the floor in a dead swoon.
There was a sudden charge as of an armed host, the sound of blows, a wild scramble, and the house was cleared. Aunt Eve with a fire shovel, Charlie with a broken hoe handle, and Dick with a big black snake whip had cleared the air.
Aunt Eve stood on the front door-step shaking the shovel at the crowd.
“Des put yo big flat hoofs in dis house ergin! I’ll split yo heads wide open! You black cattle!”
“Dat we will!” railed Dick as he cracked the whip at a little negro passing.
Charlie ran into his mother’s room to see what she was doing, and found her lying across the floor on her face.
“Aunt Eve, come quick, Mama’s dying!” he shouted.
They lifted her to the bed, and Dick ran for the doctor.
Dr. Graham looked very grave when he had completed his examination.
“Come here, my boy, I must tell you some sad news.”
Charlie’s big brown eyes glanced up with a startled look into the doctor’s face.
“Don’t tell me she’s dying, doctor, I can’t stand it.”
The doctor took his hand. “You’re getting to be a man now, my son, you will soon be thirteen. You must be brave. Your mother will not live through the night.”
The boy sank on his knees beside the still white figure, tenderly clasped her thin hand in his, and began to kiss it slowly. He would kiss it, lay his wet cheek against it, and try to warm it with his hot young blood.
It was about nine o’clock when she opened her eyes with a smile and looked into his face.
“My sweet boy,” she whispered.
“Oh! Mama, do try to live! Don’t leave me,” he sobbed in quivering tones as he leaned over and kissed her lips. She smiled faintly again.
“Yes, I must go, dear. I am tired. Your papa is waiting for me. I see him smiling and beckoning to me now. I must go.”
A sob shook the boy with an agony no words could frame.
“There, there, dear, don’t,” she soothingly said, “you will grow to be a brave strong man. You will fight this battle out, and win back our home and bring your own bride here in the far away days of sunshine and success I see for you. She will love you, and the flowers will blossom on the lawn again. But I am tired. Kiss me—I must go.”
Her heart fluttered on for a while, but she never spoke again.
At ten o’clock Mrs. Durham tenderly lifted the boy from the bedside, kissed him, and said as she led him to his room, “She’s done with suffering, Charlie. You are going to live with me now, and let me love you and be your mother.”
The Preacher had made a profound impression on his Boston congregation.
They were charmed by his simple direct appeal to the heart. His fiery emphasis, impassioned dogmatic faith, his tenderness and the strange pathos of his voice swept them off their feet. At night the big church was crowded to the doors, and throngs were struggling in vain to gain admittance. At the close of the services he was overwhelmed with the expressions of gratitude and heartfelt sympathy with which they thanked him for his messages.
He was feasted and dined and taken out into the parks behind spanking teams, until his head was dizzy with the unaccustomed whirl.
The Preacher went through it all with a heavy heart. Those beautiful homes with their rich carpets, handsome furniture, and those long lines of beautiful carriages in the parks, made a contrast with the agony of universal ruin which he left at home that crushed his soul.
He hastened to tell the story of Mrs. Gaston to a genial old merchant who had taken a great fancy to him.
A tear glistened in the old man’s eye as he quickly rose.
“Come right down to my store. I’ll get you a money order before the post-office closes. I’ve got tickets for you to go to the Coliseum with me to-night and hear the music!—the great Peace Jubilee. We are celebrating the return of peace and prosperity, and the preservation of the Union. It’s the greatest musical festival the world ever saw.”
The Preacher was dazed with the sense of its sublimity and the pathetic tragedy of the South that lay back of its joy.
The great Coliseum, constructed for the purpose, seated over forty thousand people. Such a crowd he had never seen gathered together within one building. The soul of the orator in him leaped with divine power as he glanced over the swaying ocean of human faces. There were twelve thousand trained voices in the chorus. He had dreamed of such music in Heaven when countless hosts of angels should gather around God’s throne. He had never expected to hear it on this earth. He was transported with a rapture that thrilled and lifted him above the consciousness of time and sense.
They rendered the masterpieces of all the ages. The music continued hour after hour, day after day, and night after night.
The grand chorus within the Coliseum was accompanied by the ringing of bells in the city, and the firing of cannon on the common, discharged in perfect time with the melody that rolled upward from those twelve thousand voices and broke against the gates of Heaven! When every voice was in full cry, and every instrument of music that man had ever devised, throbbed in harmony, and a hundred anvils were ringing a chorus of steel in perfect time, Parepa Rosa stepped forward on the great stage, and in a voice that rang its splendid note of triumph over all like the trumpet of the archangel, sang the Star Spangled Banner!
Men and women fainted, and one woman died, unable to endure the strain. The Preacher turned his head away and looked out of the window. A soft wind was blowing from the South. On its wings were borne to his heart the cry of the widow and orphan, the hungry and the dying still being trampled to death by a war more terrible than the first, because it was waged against the unarmed, women and children, the wounded, the starving and the defenceless! He tried in vain to keep back the tears. Bending low, he put his face in his hands and cried like a child.
“God forgive them! They know not what they do!” he moaned.
The kindly old man by his side said nothing, supposing he was overcome by the grandeur of the music.
WHEN the Preacher took the train in Boston for the South, his friendly merchant, a deacon, was by his side.
“Now, you put my name and address down in your note book, William Crane. And don’t forget about us.”
“I’ll never forget you, deacon.”
“Say, I just as well tell you,” whispered the deacon bending close, “we are not going to allow you to stay down South. We’ll be down after you before long—just as well be packing up!”
The Preacher smiled, looked out of the car window, and made no reply.
“Well, good-bye, Doctor, good-bye. God bless you and your work and your people! You’ve brought me a message warm from God’s heart. I’ll never forget it.”
“Good-bye, deacon.”
As the train whirled southward through the rich populous towns and cities of the North, again the sharp contrast with the desolation of his own land cut him like a knife. He thought of Legree and Haley, Perkins and Tim Shelby robbing widows and orphans and sweeping the poverty-stricken Southland with riot, pillage, murder and brigandage, and posing as the representatives of the conscience of the North. And his heart was heavy with sorrow.
On reaching Hambright he was thunderstruck at the news of the sale of Mrs. Gaston’s place and her tragic death.
“Why, my dear, I sent the money to her on the first Monday I spent in Boston!” he declared to his wife.
“It never reached her.”
“Then Dave Haley, the dirty slave driver, has held that letter. I’ll see to this.” He hurried to the postoffice.
“Mr. Haley,” he exclaimed, “I sent a money order letter to Mrs. Gaston from Boston on Monday a week ago.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Haley in his blandest manner, “it got here the day after the sale.”
“You’re an infamous liar!” shouted the Preacher.
“Of course! Of course! All Union men are liars to hear rebel traitors talk.”
“I’ll report you to Washington for this rascality.”
“So do, so do. Mor’n likely the President and the Post-Office Department’ll be glad to have this information from so great a man.”
As the Preacher was leaving the post-office he encountered the Hon. Tim Shelby dressed in the height of fashion, his silk hat shining in the sun, and his eyes rolling with the joy of living. The Preacher stepped squarely in front of Tim.
“Tim Shelby, I hear you have moved into Mrs. Gaston’s home and are using her furniture. By whose authority do you dare such insolence?”
“By authority of the law, sir. Mrs. Gaston died intestate. Her effects are in the hands of our County Administrator, Mr. Ezra Perkins. I’ll be pleased to receive you, sir, any time you would like to call!” said Tim with a bow.
“I’ll call in due time,” replied the Preacher, looking Tim straight in the eye.
Haley had been peeping through the window, watching and listening to this encounter.
“These charmin’ preachers think they own this county, brother Shelby,” laughed Haley as he grasped Tim’s outstretched hand.
“Yes, they are the curse of the state. I wish to God they had succeeded in burning him alive that night the boys tried it. They’ll get him later on. Brother Haley, he’s a dangerous man. He must be put out of the way, or we’ll never have smooth sailing in this county.”
“I believe you’re right, he’s just been in here cussin’ me about that letter of the widder’s that didn’t get to her in time. He thinks he can run the post-office.”
“Well, we’ll show him this county’s in the hands of the loyal!” added Tim.
“Heard the news from Charleston?”
“Heard it? I guess I have. I talked with the commanding General in Charleston two weeks ago. He told me then he was going to set aside that decision of the Supreme Court in a ringing order permitting the marriage of negroes to white women, and commanding its enforcement on every military post. I see he’s done it in no uncertain words.”
“It’s a great day, brother, for the world. There’ll be no more colour line.”
“Yes, times have changed,” said Tim with a triumphant smile. “I guess our white hot-bloods will sweat and bluster and swear a little when they read that order. But we’ve got the bayonets to enforce it. They’d just as well cool down.”
“That’s the stuff,” said Haley, taking a fresh chew of tobacco.
“Let ’em squirm. They’re flat on their backs. We are on top, and we are going to stay on top. I expect to lead a fair white bride into my house before another year and have poor white aristocrats to tend my lawn.” Tim worked his ears and looked up at the ceiling in a dreamy sort of way.
“That’ll be a sight won’t it!” exclaimed Haley with delight. “Where’s that scoundrel Nelse that lived with Mrs. Gaston?”
“Oh, we fixed him,” said Tim. “The black rascal wouldn’t join the League, and wouldn’t vote with his people, and still showed fight after we beat him half to death, so we put a levy of fifty dollars on his cabin, sold him out, and every piece of furniture, and every rag of clothes we could get hold of. He’ll leave the country now, or we’ll kill him next time.”
“You ought to a killed him the first time, and then the job would ha’ been over.”
“Oh, we’ll have the country in good shape in a little while, and don’t you forget it.”
The news of the order of the military commandant of “District No. 2,” comprising the Carolinas, abrogating the decisions of the North Carolina Supreme Court, forbidding the intermarriage of negroes and whites, fell like a bombshell on Campbell county. The people had not believed that the military authorities would dare go to the length of attempting to force social equality.
This order from Charleston was not only explicit, its language was peculiarly emphatic. It apparently commanded intermarriage, and ordered the military to enforce the command at the point of the bayonet.
The feelings of the people were wrought to the pitch of fury. It needed but a word from a daring leader, and a massacre, of every negro, scalawag and carpet-bagger in the county might have followed. The Rev. John Durham was busy day and night seeking to allay excitement and prevent an uprising of the white population.
Along with the announcement of this military order, came the startling news that Simon Legree, whose infamy was known from end to end of the state, was to be the next Governor, and that the Hon. Tim Shelby was a candidate for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Legree was in Washington at the time on a mission to secure a stand of twenty thousand rifles from the Secretary of War, with which to arm the negro troops he was drilling for the approaching election. The grant was made and Legree came back in triumph with his rifles.
Relief for the ruined people was now a hopeless dream. Black despair was clutching at every white man’s heart. The taxpayers had held a convention and sent their representatives to Washington exposing the monstrous thefts that were being committed under the authority of the government by the organised band of thieves who were looting the state. But the thieves were the pets of politicians high in power. The committee of taxpayers were insulted and sent home to pay their taxes.
And then a thing happened in Hambright that brought matters to a sudden crisis.
The Hon. Tim Shelby as school commissioner, had printed the notices for an examination of school teachers for Campbell county. An enormous tax had been levied and collected by the county for this purpose, but no school had been opened. Tim announced, however, that the school would be surely opened the first Monday in October.
Miss Mollie Graham, the pretty niece of the old doctor, was struggling to support a blind mother and four younger children. Her father and brother had been killed in the war. Their house had been sold for taxes, and they were required now to pay Tim Shelby ten dollars a month for rent. When she saw that school notice her heart gave a leap. If she could only get the place, it would save them from beggary.
She fairly ran to the Preacher to get his advice.
“Certainly, child, try for it. It’s humiliating to ask such a favour of that black ape, but if you can save your loved ones, do it.”
So with trembling hand she knocked at Tim’s door. He required all applicants to apply personally at his house. Tim met her with the bows and smirks of a dancing master.
“Delighted to see your pretty face this morning, Miss Graham,” he cried enthusiastically.
The girl blushed and hesitated at the door.
“Just walk right in the parlour, I’ll join you in a moment.”
She bravely set her lips and entered.
“And now what can I do for you, Miss Graham?”
“I’ve come to apply for a teacher’s place in the school.”
“Ah indeed, I’m glad to know that. There is only one difficulty. You must be loyal. Your people were rebels, and the new government has determined to have only loyal teachers.”
“I think I’m loyal enough to the old flag now that our people have surrendered,” said the girl.
“Yes, yes, I dare say, but do you think you can accept the new régime of government and society which we are now establishing in the South? We have abolished the colour line. Would you have a mixed school if assigned one?”
“I think I’d prefer to teach a negro school outright to a mixed one,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.
Tim continued, “You know we are living in a new world. The supreme law of the land has broken down every barrier of race and we are henceforth to be one people. The struggle for existence knows no race or colour. It’s a struggle now for bread. I’m in a position to be of great help to you and your family if you will only let me.”
The girl suddenly rose impelled by some resistless instinct.
“May I have the place then?” she asked approaching the door.
“Well, now you know it depends really altogether on my fancy. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You’re still full of silly prejudices. I can see that. But if you will overcome them enough to do one thing for me as a test, that will cost you nothing and of which the world will never be the wiser, I’ll give you the place and more, I’ll remit the ten dollars a month rent you’re now paying. Will you do it?”
“What is it?” the girl asked with pale quivering lips.
“Let me kiss you—once!” he whispered.
With a scream, she sprang past him out of the door, ran like a deer across the lawn, and fell sobbing in her mother’s arms when she reached her home.
The next day the town was unusually quiet. Tim had business with the Commandant of the company of regulars still quartered at Hambright. He spent most of the day with him, and walked about the streets ostentatiously showing his familiarity with the corporal who accompanied him. A guard of three soldiers was stationed around Tim’s house for two nights and then withdrawn.
The next night at twelve o’clock two hundred white-robed horses assembled around the old home of Mrs. Gaston where Tim was sleeping. The moon was full and flooded-the lawn with silver glory. On those horses sat two hundred white-robed silent men whose closefitting hood disguises looked like the mail helmets of ancient knights.
It was the work of a moment to seize Tim, and bind him across a horse’s back. Slowly the grim procession moved to the court house square.
When the sun rose next morning the lifeless body of Tim Shelby was dangling from a rope tied to the iron rail of the balcony of the court house. His neck was broken and his body was hanging low—scarcely three feet from the ground. His thick lips had been split with a sharp knife and from his teeth hung this placard:
“The answer of the Anglo-Saxon race to Negro lips that dare pollute with words the womanhood of the South. K. K. K.”
And the Ku Klux Klan was master of Campbell county.
The origin of this Law and Order League which sprang up like magic in a night and nullified the programme of Congress though backed by an army of a million veteran soldiers, is yet a mystery.
The simple truth is, it was a spontaneous and resistless racial uprising of clansmen of highland origin living along the Appalachian mountains and foothills of the South, and it appeared almost simultaneously in every Southern state produced by the same terrible conditions.
It was the answer to their foes of a proud and indomitable race of men driven to the wall. In the hour of their defeat they laid down their arms and accepted in good faith the results of the war. And then, when unarmed and defenceless, a group of pot-house politicians for political ends, renewed the war, and attempted to wipe out the civilisation of the South.
This Invisible Empire of White Robed Anglo-Saxon Knights was simply the old answer of organised manhood to organised crime. Its purpose was to bring order out of chaos, protect the weak and defenceless, the widows and orphans of brave men who had died for their country, to drive from power the thieves who were robbing the people, redeem the commonwealth from infamy, and reëstablish civilisation.
Within one week from its appearance, life and property were as safe as in any Northern community.
When the negroes came home from their League meeting one night they ran terror stricken past long rows of white horsemen. Not a word was spoken, but that was the last meeting the “Union League of America” ever held in Hambright.
Every negro found guilty of a misdemeanor was promptly thrashed and warned against its recurrence. The sudden appearance of this host of white cavalry grasping at their throats with the grip of cold steel struck the heart of Legree and his followers with the chill of a deadly fear.
It meant inevitable ruin, overthrow, and a prison cell for the “loyal” statesmen who were with him in his efforts to maintain the new “republican form of government” in North Carolina.
At the approaching election, this white terror could intimidate every negro in the state unless he could arm them all, suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, and place every county under the strictest martial law.
Washington was besieged by a terrified army of the “loyal” who saw their occupation threatened. They begged for more troops, more guns for negro militia, and for the reestablishment of universal martial law until the votes were properly counted.
But the great statesmen laughed them to scorn as a set of weak cowards and fools frightened by negro stories of ghosts. It was incredible to them that the crushed, poverty stricken and unarmed South could dare challenge the power of the National Government. They were sent back with scant comfort.
The night that Ezra Perkins and Haley got back from Washington, where they had gone summoned by Legree and Hogg, to testify to the death of Tim Shelby, they saw a sight that made their souls quake.
At ten o’clock, the Ku Klux Klan held a formal parade through the streets of Hambright. How the news was circulated nobody knew, but it seemed everybody in the county knew of it. The streets were lined with thousands of people who had poured in town that afternoon.
At exactly ten o’clock, a bugle call was heard on the hill to the west of the town, and the muffled tread of soft shod horses came faintly on their ears. Women stood on the sidewalks, holding their babies and smiling, and children were laughing and playing in the streets.
They rode four abreast in perfect order slowly through the town. It was utterly impossibly to recognise a man or a horse, so complete was the simple disguise of the white sheet which blanketed the horse fitting closely over his head and ears and falling gracefully over his form toward the ground.
No citizen of Hambright was in the procession. They were all in the streets watching it pass. There were fifteen hundred men in line. But the reports next day all agreed in fixing the number at over five thousand.
Perkins and Haley had watched it from a darkened room.
“Brother Haley, that’s the end! Lord I wish I was back in Michigan, jail er no jail,” said Perkins mopping the perspiration from his brow.
“We’ll have ter dig out purty quick, I reckon,” answered Haley.
“And to think them fools at Washington laughed at us!” cried Perkins clinching his fists.
And that night, mothers and fathers gathered their children to bed with a sense of grateful security they had not felt through years of war and turmoil.