The colonel timed his meal so as to leave the dining-room at the same moment with Fetters. He went up to Fetters, who was chewing a toothpick in the office, and made himself known.

"I am Mr. French," he said—he never referred to himself by his military title—"and you, I believe, are Mr. Fetters?"

"Yes, sir, that's my name," replied Fetters without enthusiasm, but eyeing the colonel keenly between narrowed lashes.

"I've been trying to see you for some time, about a matter," continued the colonel, "but never seemed able to catch up with you before."

"Yes, I heard you were at my house, but I was asleep upstairs, and didn't know you'd be'n there till you'd gone."

"Your man told me you had gone to the capital for two weeks."

"My man? Oh, you mean Turner! Well, I reckon you must have riled Turner somehow, and he thought he'd have a joke on you."

"I don't quite see the joke," said the colonel, restraining his displeasure. "But that's ancient history. Can we sit down over here in the shade and talk by ourselves for a moment?"

Fetters followed the colonel out of doors, where they drew a couple of chairs to one side, and the colonel stated the nature of his business. He wished to bargain for the release of a Negro, Bud Johnson by name, held to service by Fetters under a contract with Clarendon County. He was willing to pay whatever expense Fetters had been to on account of Johnson, and an amount sufficient to cover any estimated profits from his services.

Meanwhile Fetters picked his teeth nonchalantly, so nonchalantly as to irritate the colonel. The colonel's impatience was not lessened by the fact that Fetters waited several seconds before replying.

"Well, Mr. Fetters, what say you?"

"Colonel French," said Fetters, "I reckon you can't have the nigger."

"Is it a matter of money?" asked the colonel. "Name your figure. I don't care about the money. I want the man for a personal reason."

"So do I," returned Fetters, coolly, "and money's no object to me. I've more now than I know what to do with."

The colonel mastered his impatience. He had one appeal which no Southerner could resist.

"Mr. Fetters," he said, "I wish to get this man released to please a lady."

"Sorry to disoblige a lady," returned Fetters, "but I'll have to keep the nigger. I run a big place, and I'm obliged to maintain discipline. This nigger has been fractious and contrary, and I've sworn that he shall work out his time. I have never let any nigger get the best of me—or white man either," he added significantly.

The colonel was angry, but controlled himself long enough to make one more effort. "I'll give you five hundred dollars for your contract," he said rising from his chair.

"You couldn't get him for five thousand."

"Very well, sir," returned the colonel, "this is not the end of this. I will see, sir, if a man can be held in slavery in this State, for a debt he is willing and ready to pay. You'll hear more of this before I'm through with it."

"Another thing, Colonel French," said Fetters, his quiet eyes glittering as he spoke, "I wonder if you recollect an incident that occurred years ago, when we went to the academy in Clarendon?"

"If you refer," returned the colonel promptly, "to the time I chased you down Main Street, yes—I recalled it the first time I heard of you when I came back to Clarendon—and I remember why I did it. It is a good omen."

"That's as it may be," returned Fetters quietly. "I didn't have to recall it; I've never forgotten it. Now you want something from me, and you can't have it."

"We shall see," replied the colonel. "I bested you then, and I'll best you now."

"We shall see," said Fetters.

Fetters was not at all alarmed, indeed he smiled rather pityingly. There had been a time when these old aristocrats could speak, and the earth trembled, but that day was over. In this age money talked, and he had known how to get money, and how to use it to get more. There were a dozen civil suits pending against him in the court house there, and he knew in advance that he should win them every one, without directly paying any juryman a dollar. That any nigger should get away while he wished to hold him, was—well, inconceivable. Colonel French might have money, but he, Fetters, had men as well; and if Colonel French became too troublesome about this nigger, this friendship for niggers could be used in such a way as to make Clarendon too hot for Colonel French. He really bore no great malice against Colonel French for the little incident of their school days, but he had not forgotten it, and Colonel French might as well learn a lesson. He, Fetters, had not worked half a lifetime for a commanding position, to yield it to Colonel French or any other man. So Fetters smoked his cigar tranquilly, and waited at the hotel for his anticipated verdicts. For there could not be a jury impanelled in the county which did not have on it a majority of men who were mortgaged to Fetters. He even held the Judge's note for several hundred dollars.

The colonel waited at the station for the train back to Clarendon. When it came, it brought a gang of convicts, consigned to Fetters. They had been brought down in the regular "Jim Crow" car, for the colonel saw coloured women and children come out ahead of them. The colonel watched the wretches, in coarse striped garments, with chains on their legs and shackles on their hands, unloaded from the train and into the waiting wagons. There were burly Negroes and flat-shanked, scrawny Negroes. Some wore the ashen hue of long confinement. Some were shamefaced, some reckless, some sullen. A few white convicts among them seemed doubly ashamed—both of their condition and of their company; they kept together as much as they were permitted, and looked with contempt at their black companions in misfortune. Fetters's man and Haines, armed with whips, and with pistols in their belts, were present to oversee the unloading, and the colonel could see them point him out to the State officers who had come in charge of the convicts, and see them look at him with curious looks. The scene was not edifying. There were criminals in New York, he knew very well, but he had never seen one. They were not marched down Broadway in stripes and chains. There were certain functions of society, as of the body, which were more decently performed in retirement. There was work in the State for the social reformer, and the colonel, undismayed by his temporary defeat, metaphorically girded up his loins, went home, and, still metaphorically, set out to put a spoke in Fetters's wheel.



Twenty-seven

His first step was to have Caxton look up and abstract for him the criminal laws of the State. They were bad enough, in all conscience. Men could be tried without jury and condemned to infamous punishments, involving stripes and chains, for misdemeanours which in more enlightened States were punished with a small fine or brief detention. There were, for instance, no degrees of larceny, and the heaviest punishment might be inflicted, at the discretion of the judge, for the least offense.

The vagrancy law, of which the colonel had had some experience, was an open bid for injustice and "graft" and clearly designed to profit the strong at the expense of the weak. The crop-lien laws were little more than the instruments of organised robbery. To these laws the colonel called the attention of some of his neighbours with whom he was on terms of intimacy. The enlightened few had scarcely known of their existence, and quite agreed that the laws were harsh and ought to be changed.

But when the colonel, pursuing his inquiry, undertook to investigate the operation of these laws, he found an appalling condition. The statutes were mild and beneficent compared with the results obtained under cover of them. Caxton spent several weeks about the State looking up the criminal records, and following up the sentences inflicted, working not merely for his fee, but sharing the colonel's indignation at the state of things unearthed. Convict labour was contracted out to private parties, with little or no effective State supervision, on terms which, though exceedingly profitable to the State, were disastrous to free competitive labour. More than one lawmaker besides Fetters was numbered among these contractors.

Leaving the realm of crime, they found that on hundreds of farms, ignorant Negroes, and sometimes poor whites, were held in bondage under claims of debt, or under contracts of exclusive employment for long terms of years—contracts extorted from ignorance by craft, aided by State laws which made it a misdemeanour to employ such persons elsewhere. Free men were worked side by side with convicts from the penitentiary, and women and children herded with the most depraved criminals, thus breeding a criminal class to prey upon the State.

In the case of Fetters alone the colonel found a dozen instances where the law, bad as it was, had not been sufficient for Fetters's purpose, but had been plainly violated. Caxton discovered a discharged guard of Fetters, who told him of many things that had taken place at Sycamore; and brought another guard one evening, at that time employed there, who told him, among other things, that Bud Johnson's life, owing to his surliness and rebellious conduct, and some spite which Haines seemed to bear against him, was simply a hell on earth—that even a strong Negro could not stand it indefinitely.

A case was made up and submitted to the grand jury. Witnesses were summoned at the colonel's instance. At the last moment they all weakened, even the discharged guard, and their testimony was not sufficient to justify an indictment.

The colonel then sued out a writ of habeas corpus for the body of Bud Johnson, and it was heard before the common pleas court at Clarendon, with public opinion divided between the colonel and Fetters. The court held that under his contract, for which he had paid the consideration, Fetters was entitled to Johnson's services.

The colonel, defeated but still undismayed, ordered Caxton to prepare a memorial for presentation to the federal authorities, calling their attention to the fact that peonage, a crime under the Federal statutes, was being flagrantly practised in the State. This allegation was supported by a voluminous brief, giving names and dates and particular instances of barbarity. The colonel was not without some quiet support in this movement; there were several public-spirited men in the county, including his able lieutenant Caxton, Dr. Price and old General Thornton, none of whom were under any obligation to Fetters, and who all acknowledged that something ought to be done to purge the State of a great disgrace.

There was another party, of course, which deprecated any scandal which would involve the good name of the State or reflect upon the South, and who insisted that in time these things would pass away and there would be no trace of them in future generations. But the colonel insisted that so also would the victims of the system pass away, who, being already in existence, were certainly entitled to as much consideration as generations yet unborn; it was hardly fair to sacrifice them to a mere punctilio. The colonel had reached the conviction that the regenerative forces of education and enlightenment, in order to have any effect in his generation, must be reinforced by some positive legislative or executive action, or else the untrammelled forces of graft and greed would override them; and he was human enough, at this stage of his career to wish to see the result of his labours, or at least a promise of result.

The colonel's papers were forwarded to the proper place, whence they were referred from official to official, and from department to department. That it might take some time to set in motion the machinery necessary to reach the evil, the colonel knew very well, and hence was not impatient at any reasonable delay. Had he known that his presentation had created a sensation in the highest quarter, but that owing to the exigencies of national politics it was not deemed wise, at that time, to do anything which seemed like an invasion of State rights or savoured of sectionalism, he might not have been so serenely confident of the outcome. Nor had Fetters known as much, would he have done the one thing which encouraged the colonel more than anything else. Caxton received a message one day from Judge Bullard, representing Fetters, in which Fetters made the offer that if Colonel French would stop his agitation on the labour laws, and withdraw any papers he had filed, and promise to drop the whole matter, he would release Bud Johnson.

The colonel did not hesitate a moment. He had gone into this fight for Johnson—or rather to please Miss Laura. He had risen now to higher game; nothing less than the system would satisfy him.

"But, Colonel," said Caxton, "it's pretty hard on the nigger. They'll kill him before his time's up. If you'll give me a free hand, I'll get him anyway."

"How?"

"Perhaps it's just as well you shouldn't know. But I have friends at Sycamore."

"You wouldn't break the law?" asked the colonel.

"Fetters is breaking the law," replied Caxton. "He's holding Johnson for debt—and whether that is lawful or not, he certainly has no right to kill him."

"You're right," replied the colonel. "Get Johnson away, I don't care how. The end justifies the means—that's an argument that goes down here. Get him away, and send him a long way off, and he can write for his wife to join him. His escape need not interfere with our other plans. We have plenty of other cases against Fetters."

Within a week, Johnson, with the connivance of a bribed guard, a poor-white man from Clarendon, had escaped from Fetters and seemingly vanished from Beaver County. Fetters's lieutenants were active in their search for him, but sought in vain.



Twenty-eight

Ben Dudley awoke the morning after the assembly ball, with a violent headache and a sense of extreme depression, which was not relieved by the sight of his reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau in the hotel bedroom where he found himself.

One of his eyes was bloodshot, and surrounded by a wide area of discolouration, and he was conscious of several painful contusions on other portions of his body. His clothing was badly disordered and stained with blood; and, all in all, he was scarcely in a condition to appear in public. He made such a toilet as he could, and, anxious to avoid observation, had his horse brought from the livery around to the rear door of the hotel, and left for Mink Run by the back streets. He did not return to town for a week, and when he made his next appearance there, upon strictly a business visit, did not go near the Treadwells', and wore such a repellent look that no one ventured to speak to him about his encounter with Fetters and McRae. He was humiliated and ashamed, and angry with himself and all the world. He had lost Graciella already; any possibility that might have remained of regaining her affection, was destroyed by his having made her name the excuse for a barroom broil. His uncle was not well, and with the decline of his health, his monomania grew more acute and more absorbing, and he spent most of his time in the search for the treasure and in expostulations with Viney to reveal its whereabouts. The supervision of the plantation work occupied Ben most of the time, and during his intervals of leisure he sought to escape unpleasant thoughts by busying himself with the model of his cotton gin.

His life had run along in this way for about two weeks after the ball, when one night Barclay Fetters, while coming to town from his father's plantation at Sycamore, in company with Turner, his father's foreman, was fired upon from ambush, in the neighbourhood of Mink Run, and seriously wounded. Groaning heavily and in a state of semi-unconsciousness he was driven by Turner, in the same buggy in which he had been shot, to Doctor Price's house, which lay between Mink Run and the town.

The doctor examined the wound, which was serious. A charge of buckshot had been fired at close range, from a clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. The sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. A sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. Meantime a messenger was despatched to Sycamore for Fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. To his anxious inquiries the doctor could give no very hopeful answer.

"He's not out of danger," said Doctor Price, "and won't be for several days. I haven't found several of those shot, and until they're located I can't tell what will happen. Your son has a good constitution, but it has been abused somewhat and is not in the best condition to throw off an injury."

"Do the best you can for him, Doc," said Fetters, "and I'll make it worth your while. And as for the double-damned scoundrel that shot him in the dark, I'll rake this county with a fine-toothed comb till he's found. If Bark dies, the murderer shall hang as high as Haman, if it costs me a million dollars, or, if Bark gets well, he shall have the limit of the law. No man in this State shall injure me or mine and go unpunished."

The next day Ben Dudley was arrested at Mink Run, on a warrant sworn out by Fetters, senior, charging Dudley with attempted murder. The accused was brought to Clarendon, and lodged in Beaver County jail.

Ben sent for Caxton, from whom he learned that his offense was not subject to bail until it became certain that Barclay Fetters would recover. For in the event of his death, the charge would be murder; in case of recovery, the offense would be merely attempted murder, or shooting with intent to kill, for which bail was allowable. Meantime he would have to remain in jail.

In a day or two young Fetters was pronounced out of danger, so far as his life was concerned, and Colonel French, through Caxton, offered to sign Ben's bail bond. To Caxton's surprise Dudley refused to accept bail at the colonel's hands.

"I don't want any favours from Colonel French," he said decidedly. "I prefer to stay in jail rather than to be released on his bond."

So he remained in jail.

Graciella was not so much surprised at Ben's refusal to accept bail. She had reasoned out, with a fine instinct, the train of emotions which had brought her lover to grief, and her own share in stirring them up. She could not believe that Ben was capable of shooting a man from ambush; but even if he had, it would have been for love of her; and if he had not, she had nevertheless been the moving cause of the disaster. She would not willingly have done young Mr. Fetters an injury. He had favoured her by his attentions, and, if all stories were true, he had behaved better than Ben, in the difficulty between them, and had suffered more. But she loved Ben, as she grew to realise, more and more. She wanted to go and see Ben in jail but her aunt did not think it proper. Appearances were all against Ben, and he had not purged himself by any explanation. So Graciella sat down and wrote him a long letter. She knew very well that the one thing that would do him most good would be the announcement of her Aunt Laura's engagement to Colonel French. There was no way to bring this about, except by first securing her aunt's permission. This would make necessary a frank confession, to which, after an effort, she nerved herself.

"Aunt Laura," she said, at a moment when they were alone together, "I know why Ben will not accept bail from Colonel French, and why he will not tell his side of the quarrel between himself and Mr. Fetters. He was foolish enough to imagine that Colonel French was coming to the house to see me, and that I preferred the colonel to him. And, Aunt Laura, I have a confession to make; I have done something for which I want to beg your pardon. I listened that night, and overheard the colonel ask you to be his wife. Please, dear Aunt Laura, forgive me, and let me write and tell Ben—just Ben, in confidence. No one else need know it."

Miss Laura was shocked and pained, and frankly said so, but could not refuse the permission, on condition that Ben should be pledged to keep her secret, which, for reasons of her own, she was not yet ready to make public. She, too, was fond of Ben, and hoped that he might clear himself of the accusation. So Graciella wrote the letter. She was no more frank in it, however, on one point, than she had been with her aunt, for she carefully avoided saying that she had taken Colonel French's attentions seriously, or built any hopes upon them, but chided Ben for putting such a construction upon her innocent actions, and informed him, as proof of his folly, and in the strictest confidence, that Colonel French was engaged to her Aunt Laura. She expressed her sorrow for his predicament, her profound belief in his innocence, and her unhesitating conviction that he would be acquitted of the pending charge.

To this she expected by way of answer a long letter of apology, explanation, and protestations of undying love.

She received, instead, a brief note containing a cold acknowledgment of her letter, thanking her for her interest in his welfare, and assuring her that he would respect Miss Laura's confidence. There was no note of love or reproachfulness—mere cold courtesy.

Graciella was cut to the quick, so much so that she did not even notice Ben's mistakes in spelling. It would have been better had he overwhelmed her with reproaches—it would have shown at least that he still loved her. She cried bitterly, and lay awake very late that night, wondering what else she could do for Ben that a self-respecting young lady might. For the first time, she was more concerned about Ben than about herself. If by marrying him immediately she could have saved him from danger and disgrace she would have done so without one selfish thought—unless it were selfish to save one whom she loved.

* * * * *

The preliminary hearing in the case of the State vs. Benjamin Dudley was held as soon as Doctor Price pronounced Barclay Fetters out of danger. The proceedings took place before Squire Reddick, the same justice from whom the colonel had bought Peter's services, and from whom he had vainly sought to secure Bud Johnson's release.

In spite of Dudley's curt refusal of his assistance, the colonel, to whom Miss Laura had conveyed a hint of the young man's frame of mind, had instructed Caxton to spare no trouble or expense in the prisoner's interest. There was little doubt, considering Fetters's influence and vindictiveness, that Dudley would be remanded, though the evidence against him was purely circumstantial; but it was important that the evidence should be carefully scrutinised, and every legal safeguard put to use.

The case looked bad for the prisoner. Barclay Fetters was not present, nor did the prosecution need him; his testimony could only have been cumulative.

Turner described the circumstances of the shooting from the trees by the roadside near Mink Run, and the driving of the wounded man to Doctor Price's.

Doctor Price swore to the nature of the wound, its present and probable consequences, which involved the loss of one eye and perhaps the other, and produced the shot he had extracted.

McRae testified that he and Barclay Fetters had gone down between dances, from the Opera Ball, to the hotel bar, to get a glass of seltzer. They had no sooner entered the bar than the prisoner, who had evidently been drinking heavily and showed all the signs of intoxication, had picked a quarrel with them and assaulted Mr. Fetters. Fetters, with the aid of the witness, had defended himself. In the course of the altercation, the prisoner had used violent and profane language, threatening, among other things, to kill Fetters. All this testimony was objected to, but was admitted as tending to show a motive for the crime. This closed the State's case.

Caxton held a hurried consultation with his client. Should they put in any evidence, which would be merely to show their hand, since the prisoner would in any event undoubtedly be bound over? Ben was unable to deny what had taken place at the hotel, for he had no distinct recollection of it—merely a blurred impression, like the memory of a bad dream. He could not swear that he had not threatened Fetters. The State's witnesses had refrained from mentioning the lady's name; he could do no less. So far as the shooting was concerned, he had had no weapon with which to shoot. His gun had been stolen that very day, and had not been recovered.

"The defense will offer no testimony," declared Caxton, at the result of the conference.

The justice held the prisoner to the grand jury, and fixed the bond at ten thousand dollars. Graciella's information had not been without its effect, and when Caxton suggested that he could still secure bail, he had little difficulty in inducing Ben to accept Colonel French's friendly offices. The bail bond was made out and signed, and the prisoner released.

Caxton took Ben to his office after the hearing. There Ben met the colonel, thanked him for his aid and friendship, and apologised for his former rudeness.

"I was in a bad way, sir," he said, "and hardly knew what I was doing. But I know I didn't shoot Bark Fetters, and never thought of such a thing."

"I'm sure you didn't, my boy," said the colonel, laying his hand, in familiar fashion, upon the young fellow's shoulder, "and we'll prove it before we quit. There are some ladies who believe the same thing, and would like to hear you say it."

"Thank you, sir," said Ben. "I should like to tell them, but I shouldn't want to enter their house until I am cleared of this charge. I think too much of them to expose them to any remarks about harbouring a man out on bail for a penitentiary offense. I'll write to them, sir, and thank them for their trust and friendship, and you can tell them for me, if you will, that I'll come to see them when not only I, but everybody else, can say that I am fit to go."

"Your feelings do you credit," returned the colonel warmly, "and however much they would like to see you, I'm sure the ladies will appreciate your delicacy. As your friend and theirs, you must permit me to serve you further, whenever the opportunity offers, until this affair is finished."

Ben thanked the colonel from a full heart, and went back to Mink Run, where, in the effort to catch up the plantation work, which had fallen behind in his absence, he sought to forget the prison atmosphere and lose the prison pallor. The disgrace of having been in jail was indelible, and the danger was by no means over. The sympathy of his friends would have been priceless to him, but to remain away from them would be not only the honourable course to pursue, but a just punishment for his own folly. For Graciella, after all, was only a girl—a young girl, and scarcely yet to be judged harshly for her actions; while he was a man grown, who knew better, and had not acted according to his lights.

Three days after Ben Dudley's release on bail, Clarendon was treated to another sensation. Former constable Haines, now employed as an overseer at Fetters's convict farm, while driving in a buggy to Clarendon, where he spent his off-duty spells, was shot from ambush near Mink Run, and his right arm shattered in such a manner as to require amputation.



Twenty-nine

Colonel French's interest in Ben Dudley's affairs had not been permitted to interfere with his various enterprises. Work on the chief of these, the cotton mill, had gone steadily forward, with only occasional delays, incident to the delivery of material, the weather, and the health of the workmen, which was often uncertain for a day or two after pay day. The coloured foreman of the brick-layers had been seriously ill; his place had been filled by a white man, under whom the walls were rising rapidly. Jim Green, the foreman whom the colonel had formerly discharged, and the two white brick-layers who had quit at the same time, applied for reinstatement. The colonel took the two men on again, but declined to restore Green, who had been discharged for insubordination.

Green went away swearing vengeance. At Clay Johnson's saloon he hurled invectives at the colonel, to all who would listen, and with anger and bad whiskey, soon worked himself into a frame of mind that was ripe for any mischief. Some of his utterances were reported to the colonel, who was not without friends—the wealthy seldom are; but he paid no particular attention to them, except to keep a watchman at the mill at night, lest this hostility should seek an outlet in some attempt to injure the property. The precaution was not amiss, for once the watchman shot at a figure prowling about the mill. The lesson was sufficient, apparently, for there was no immediate necessity to repeat it.

The shooting of Haines, while not so sensational as that of Barclay Fetters, had given rise to considerable feeling against Ben Dudley. That two young men should quarrel, and exchange shots, would not ordinarily have been a subject of extended remark. But two attempts at assassination constituted a much graver affair. That Dudley was responsible for this second assault was the generally accepted opinion. Fetters's friends and hirelings were openly hostile to young Dudley, and Haines had been heard to say, in his cups, at Clay Jackson's saloon, that when young Dudley was tried and convicted and sent to the penitentiary, he would be hired out to Fetters, who had the country contract, and that he, Haines, would be delighted to have Dudley in his gang. The feeling against Dudley grew from day to day, and threats and bets were openly made that he would not live to be tried. There was no direct proof against him, but the moral and circumstantial evidence was quite sufficient to convict him in the eyes of Fetter's friends and supporters. The colonel was sometimes mentioned, in connection with the affair as a friend of Ben's, for whom he had given bail, and as an enemy of Fetters, to whom his antagonism in various ways had become a matter of public knowledge and interest.

One day, while the excitement attending the second shooting was thus growing, Colonel French received through the mail a mysteriously worded note, vaguely hinting at some matter of public importance which the writer wished to communicate to him, and requesting a private interview for the purpose, that evening, at the colonel's house. The note, which had every internal evidence of sincerity, was signed by Henry Taylor, the principal of the coloured school, whom the colonel had met several times in reference to the proposed industrial school. From the tenor of the communication, and what he knew about Taylor, the colonel had no doubt that the matter was one of importance, at least not one to be dismissed without examination. He thereupon stepped into Caxton's office and wrote an answer to the letter, fixing eight o'clock that evening as the time, and his own library as the place, of a meeting with the teacher. This letter he deposited in the post-office personally—it was only a step from Caxton's office. Upon coming out of the post-office he saw the teacher standing on an opposite corner. When the colonel had passed out of sight, Taylor crossed the street, entered the post-office, and soon emerged with the letter. He had given no sign that he saw the colonel, but had looked rather ostentatiously the other way when that gentleman had glanced in his direction.

At the appointed hour there was a light step on the colonel's piazza. The colonel was on watch, and opened the door himself, ushering Taylor into his library, a very handsome and comfortable room, the door of which he carefully closed behind them.

The teacher looked around cautiously.

"Are we alone, sir?"

"Yes, entirely so."

"And can any one hear us?"

"No. What have you got to tell me?"

"Colonel French," replied the other, "I'm in a hard situation, and I want you to promise that you'll never let on to any body that I told you what I'm going to say."

"All right, Mr. Taylor, if it is a proper promise to make. You can trust my discretion."

"Yes, sir, I'm sure I can. We coloured folks, sir, are often accused of trying to shield criminals of our own race, or of not helping the officers of the law to catch them. Maybe we does, suh," he said, lapsing in his earnestness, into bad grammar, "maybe we does sometimes, but not without reason."

"What reason?" asked the colonel.

"Well, sir, fer the reason that we ain't always shore that a coloured man will get a fair trial, or any trial at all, or that he'll get a just sentence after he's been tried. We have no hand in makin' the laws, or in enforcin' 'em; we are not summoned on jury; and yet we're asked to do the work of constables and sheriffs who are paid for arrestin' criminals, an' for protectin' 'em from mobs, which they don't do."

"I have no doubt every word you say is true, Mr. Taylor, and such a state of things is unjust, and will some day be different, if I can help to make it so. But, nevertheless, all good citizens, whatever their colour, ought to help to preserve peace and good order."

"Yes, sir, so they ought; and I want to do just that; I want to co-operate, and a whole heap of us want to co-operate with the good white people to keep down crime and lawlessness. I know there's good white people who want to see justice done—but they ain't always strong enough to run things; an' if any one of us coloured folks tells on another one, he's liable to lose all his frien's. But I believe, sir, that I can trust you to save me harmless, and to see that nothin' mo' than justice is done to the coloured man."

"Yes, Taylor, you can trust me to do all that I can, and I think I have considerable influence. Now, what's on your mind? Do you know who shot Haines and Mr. Fetters?"

"Well, sir, you're a mighty good guesser. It ain't so much Mr. Fetters an' Mr. Haines I'm thinkin' about, for that place down the country is a hell on earth, an' they're the devils that runs it. But there's a friend of yo'rs in trouble, for something he didn' do, an' I wouldn' stan' for an innocent man bein' sent to the penitentiary—though many a po' Negro has been. Yes, sir, I know that Mr. Ben Dudley didn' shoot them two white men."

"So do I," rejoined the colonel. "Who did?"

"It was Bud Johnson, the man you tried to get away from Mr. Fetters—yo'r coachman tol' us about it, sir, an' we know how good a friend of ours you are, from what you've promised us about the school. An' I wanted you to know, sir. You are our friend, and have showed confidence in us, and I wanted to prove to you that we are not ungrateful, an' that we want to be good citizens."

"I had heard," said the colonel, "that Johnson had escaped and left the county."

"So he had, sir, but he came back. They had 'bused him down at that place till he swore he'd kill every one that had anything to do with him. It was Mr. Turner he shot at the first time and he hit young Mr. Fetters by accident. He stole a gun from ole Mr. Dudley's place at Mink Run, shot Mr. Fetters with it, and has kept it ever since, and shot Mr. Haines with it. I suppose they'd 'a' ketched him before, if it hadn't be'n for suspectin' young Mr. Dudley."

"Where is Johnson now," asked the colonel.

"He's hidin' in an old log cabin down by the swamp back of Mink Run. He sleeps in the daytime, and goes out at night to get food and watch for white men from Mr. Fetters's place."

"Does his wife know where he is?"

"No, sir; he ain't never let her know."

"By the way, Taylor," asked the colonel, "how do you know all this?"

"Well, sir," replied the teacher, with something which, in an uneducated Negro would have been a very pronounced chuckle, "there's mighty little goin' on roun' here that I don't find out, sooner or later."

"Taylor," said the colonel, rising to terminate the interview, "you have rendered a public service, have proved yourself a good citizen, and have relieved Mr. Dudley of serious embarrassment. I will see that steps are taken to apprehend Johnson, and will keep your participation in the matter secret, since you think it would hurt your influence with your people. And I promise you faithfully that every effort shall be made to see that Johnson has a fair trial and no more than a just punishment."

He gave the Negro his hand.

"Thank you, sir, thank you, sir," replied the teacher, returning the colonel's clasp. "If there were more white men like you, the coloured folks would have no more trouble."

The colonel let Taylor out, and watched him as he looked cautiously up and down the street to see that he was not observed. That coloured folks, or any other kind, should ever cease to have trouble, was a vain imagining. But the teacher had made a well-founded complaint of injustice which ought to be capable of correction; and he had performed a public-spirited action, even though he had felt constrained to do it in a clandestine manner.

About his own part in the affair the colonel was troubled. It was becoming clear to him that the task he had undertaken was no light one—not the task of apprehending Johnson and clearing Dudley, but that of leavening the inert mass of Clarendon with the leaven of enlightenment. With the best of intentions, and hoping to save a life, he had connived at turning a murderer loose upon the community. It was true that the community, through unjust laws, had made him a murderer, but it was no part of the colonel's plan to foster or promote evil passions, or to help the victims of the law to make reprisals. His aim was to bring about, by better laws and more liberal ideas, peace, harmony, and universal good will. There was a colossal work for him to do, and for all whom he could enlist with him in this cause. The very standards of right and wrong had been confused by the race issue, and must be set right by the patient appeal to reason and humanity. Primitive passions and private vengeance must be subordinated to law and order and the higher good. A new body of thought must be built up, in which stress must be laid upon the eternal verities, in the light of which difficulties which now seemed unsurmountable would be gradually overcome.

But this halcyon period was yet afar off, and the colonel roused himself to the duty of the hour. With the best intentions he had let loose upon the community, in a questionable way, a desperate character. It was no less than his plain duty to put the man under restraint. To rescue from Fetters a man whose life was threatened, was one thing. To leave a murderer at large now would be to endanger innocent lives, and imperil Ben Dudley's future.

The arrest of Bud Johnson brought an end to the case against Ben Dudley. The prosecuting attorney, who was under political obligations to Fetters, seemed reluctant to dismiss the case, until Johnson's guilt should have been legally proved; but the result of the Negro's preliminary hearing rendered this position no longer tenable; the case against Ben was nolled, and he could now hold up his head as a free man, with no stain upon his character.

Indeed, the reaction in his favour as one unjustly indicted, went far to wipe out from the public mind the impression that he was a drunkard and a rowdy. It was recalled that he was of good family and that his forebears had rendered valuable service to the State, and that he had never been seen to drink before, or known to be in a fight, but that on the contrary he was quiet and harmless to a fault. Indeed, the Clarendon public would have admired a little more spirit in a young man, even to the extent of condoning an occasional lapse into license.

There was sincere rejoicing at the Treadwell house when Ben, now free in mind, went around to see the ladies. Miss Laura was warmly sympathetic and congratulatory; and Graciella, tearfully happy, tried to make up by a sweet humility, through which shone the true womanliness of a hitherto undeveloped character, for the past stings and humiliations to which her selfish caprice had subjected her lover. Ben resumed his visits, if not with quite their former frequency, and it was only a day or two later that the colonel found him and Graciella, with his own boy Phil, grouped in familiar fashion on the steps, where Ben was demonstrating with some pride of success, the operation of his model, into which he was feeding cotton when the colonel came up.

The colonel stood a moment and looked at the machine.

"It's quite ingenious," he said. "Explain the principle."

Ben described the mechanism, in brief, well-chosen words which conveyed the thought clearly and concisely, and revealed a fine mind for mechanics and at the same time an absolute lack of technical knowledge.

"It would never be of any use, sir," he said, at the end, "for everybody has the other kind. But it's another way, and I think a better."

"It is clever," said the colonel thoughtfully, as he went into the house.

The colonel had not changed his mind at all since asking Miss Laura to be his wife. The glow of happiness still warmed her cheek, the spirit of youth still lingered in her eyes and in her smile. He might go a thousand miles before meeting a woman who would please him more, take better care of Phil, or preside with more dignity over his household. Her simple grace would adapt itself to wealth as easily as it had accommodated itself to poverty. It would be a pleasure to travel with her to new scenes and new places, to introduce her into a wider world, to see her expand in the generous sunlight of ease and freedom from responsibility.

True to his promise, the colonel made every effort to see that Bud Johnson should be protected against mob violence and given a fair trial. There was some intemperate talk among the partisans of Fetters, and an ominous gathering upon the streets the day after the arrest, but Judge Miller, of the Beaver County circuit, who was in Clarendon that day, used his influence to discountenance any disorder, and promised a speedy trial of the prisoner. The crime was not the worst of crimes, and there was no excuse for riot or lynch law. The accused could not escape his just punishment.

As a result of the judge's efforts, supplemented by the colonel's and those of Doctor Price and several ministers, any serious fear of disorder was removed, and a handful of Fetters's guards who had come up from his convict farm and foregathered with some choice spirits of the town at Clay Jackson's saloon, went back without attempting to do what they had avowedly come to town to accomplish.



Thirty

One morning the colonel, while overseeing the work at the new mill building, stepped on the rounded handle of a chisel, which had been left lying carelessly on the floor, and slipped and fell, spraining his ankle severely. He went home in his buggy, which was at the mill, and sent for Doctor Price, who put his foot in a plaster bandage and ordered him to keep quiet for a week.

Peter and Phil went around to the Treadwells' to inform the ladies of the accident. On reaching the house after the accident, the colonel had taken off his coat, and sent Peter to bring him one from the closet off his bedroom.

When the colonel put on the coat, he felt some papers in the inside pocket, and taking them out, recognised the two old letters he had taken from the lining of his desk several months before. The housekeeper, in a moment of unusual zeal, had discovered and mended the tear in the sleeve, and Peter had by chance selected this particular coat to bring to his master. When Peter started, with Phil, to go to the Treadwells', the colonel gave him the two letters.

"Give these," he said, "to Miss Laura, and tell her I found them in the old desk."

It was not long before Miss Laura came, with Graciella, to call on the colonel. When they had expressed the proper sympathy, and had been assured that the hurt was not dangerous, Miss Laura spoke of another matter.

"Henry," she said, with an air of suppressed excitement, "I have made a discovery. I don't quite know what it means, or whether it amounts to anything, but in one of the envelopes you sent me just now there was a paper signed by Mr. Fetters. I do not know how it could have been left in the desk; we had searched it, years ago, in every nook and cranny, and found nothing."

The colonel explained the circumstances of his discovery of the papers, but prudently refrained from mentioning how long ago they had taken place.

Miss Laura handed him a thin, oblong, yellowish slip of paper, which had been folded in the middle; it was a printed form, upon which several words had been filled in with a pen.

"It was enclosed in this," she said, handing him another paper.

The colonel took the papers and glanced over them.

"Mother thinks," said Miss Laura anxiously, "that they are the papers we were looking for, that prove that Fetters was in father's debt."

The colonel had been thinking rapidly. The papers were, indeed, a promissory note from Fetters to Mr. Treadwell, and a contract and memorandum of certain joint transactions in turpentine and cotton futures. The note was dated twenty years back. Had it been produced at the time of Mr. Treadwell's death, it would not have been difficult to collect, and would have meant to his survivors the difference between poverty and financial independence. Now it was barred by the lapse of time.

Miss Laura was waiting in eager expectation. Outwardly calm, her eyes were bright, her cheeks were glowing, her bosom rose and fell excitedly. Could he tell her that this seemingly fortunate accident was merely the irony of fate—a mere cruel reminder of a former misfortune? No, she could not believe it!

"It has made me happy, Henry," she said, while he still kept his eyes bent on the papers to conceal his perplexity, "it has made me very happy to think that I may not come to you empty-handed."

"Dear woman," he thought, "you shall not. If the note is not good, it shall be made good."

"Laura," he said aloud, "I am no lawyer, but Caxton shall look at these to-day, and I shall be very much mistaken if they do not bring you a considerable sum of money. Say nothing about them, however, until Caxton reports. He will be here to see me to-day and by to-morrow you shall have his opinion."

Miss Laura went away with a radiantly hopeful face, and as she and Graciella went down the street, the colonel noted that her step was scarcely less springy than her niece's. It was worth the amount of Fetters's old note to make her happy; and since he meant to give her all that she might want, what better way than to do it by means of this bit of worthless paper? It would be a harmless deception, and it would save the pride of three gentlewomen, with whom pride was not a disease, to poison and scorch and blister, but an inspiration to courtesy, and kindness, and right living. Such a pride was worth cherishing even at a sacrifice, which was, after all, no sacrifice.

He had already sent word to Caxton of his accident, requesting him to call at the house on other business. Caxton came in the afternoon, and when the matter concerning which he had come had been disposed of, Colonel French produced Fetters's note.

"Caxton," he said, "I wish to pay this note and let it seem to have come from Fetters."

Caxton looked at the note.

"Why should you pay it?" he asked. "I mean," he added, noting a change in the colonel's expression, "why shouldn't Fetters pay it?"

"Because it is outlawed," he replied, "and we could hardly expect him to pay for anything he didn't have to pay. The statute of limitations runs against it after fifteen years—and it's older than that, much older than that."

Caxton made a rapid mental calculation.

"That is the law in New York," he said, "but here the statute doesn't begin to run for twenty years. The twenty years for which this note was given expires to-day."

"Then it is good?" demanded the colonel, looking at his watch.

"It is good," said Caxton, "provided there is no defence to it except the statute, and provided I can file a petition on it in the county clerk's office by four o'clock, the time at which the office closes. It is now twenty minutes of four."

"Can you make it?"

"I'll try."

Caxton, since his acquaintance with Colonel French, had learned something more about the value of half an hour than he had ever before appreciated, and here was an opportunity to test his knowledge. He literally ran the quarter of a mile that lay between the colonel's residence and the court house, to the open-eyed astonishment of those whom he passed, some of whom wondered whether he were crazy, and others whether he had committed a crime. He dashed into the clerk's office, seized a pen, and the first piece of paper handy, and began to write a petition. The clerk had stepped into the hall, and when he came leisurely in at three minutes to four, Caxton discovered that he had written his petition on the back of a blank marriage license. He folded it, ran his pen through the printed matter, endorsed it, "Estate of Treadwell vs. Fetters," signed it with the name of Ellen Treadwell, as executrix, by himself as her attorney, swore to it before the clerk, and handed it to that official, who raised his eyebrows as soon as he saw the endorsement.

"Now, Mr. Munroe," said Caxton, "if you'll enter that on the docket, now, as of to-day, I'll be obliged to you. I'd rather have the transaction all finished up while I wait. Your fee needn't wait the termination of the suit. I'll pay it now and take a receipt for it."

The clerk whistled to himself as he read the petition in order to make the entry.

"That's an old-timer," he said. "It'll make the old man cuss."

"Yes," said Caxton. "Do me a favour, and don't say anything about it for a day or two. I don't think the suit will ever come to trial."



Thirty-one

On the day following these events, the colonel, on the arm of old Peter, hobbled out upon his front porch, and seating himself in a big rocking chair, in front of which a cushion had been adjusted for his injured ankle, composed himself to read some arrears of mail which had come in the day before, and over which he had only glanced casually. When he was comfortably settled, Peter and Phil walked down the steps, upon the lowest of which they seated themselves. The colonel had scarcely begun to read before he called to the old man.

"Peter," he said, "I wish you'd go upstairs, and look in my room, and bring me a couple of light-coloured cigars from the box on my bureau—the mild ones, you know, Peter."

"Yas, suh, I knows, suh, de mil' ones, dem wid de gol' ban's 'roun' 'em. Now you stay right hyuh, chile, till Peter come back."

Peter came up the steps and disappeared in the doorway.

The colonel opened a letter from Kirby, in which that energetic and versatile gentleman assured the colonel that he had evolved a great scheme, in which there were millions for those who would go into it. He had already interested Mrs. Jerviss, who had stated she would be governed by what the colonel did in the matter. The letter went into some detail upon this subject, and then drifted off into club and social gossip. Several of the colonel's friends had inquired particularly about him. One had regretted the loss to their whist table. Another wanted the refusal of his box at the opera, if he were not coming back for the winter.

"I think you're missed in a certain quarter, old fellow. I know a lady who would be more than delighted to see you. I am invited to her house to dinner, ostensibly to talk about our scheme, in reality to talk about you.

"But this is all by the way. The business is the thing. Take my proposition under advisement. We all made money together before; we can make it again. My option has ten days to run. Wire me before it is up what reply to make. I know what you'll say, but I want your 'ipse dixit.'"

The colonel knew too what his reply would be, and that it would be very different from Kirby's anticipation. He would write it, he thought, next day, so that Kirby should not be kept in suspense, or so that he might have time to enlist other capital in the enterprise. The colonel felt really sorry to disappoint his good friends. He would write and inform Kirby of his plans, including that of his approaching marriage.

He had folded the letter and laid it down, and had picked up a newspaper, when Peter returned with the cigars and a box of matches.

"Mars Henry?" he asked, "w'at's gone wid de chile?"

"Phil?" replied the colonel, looking toward the step, from which the boy had disappeared. "I suppose he went round the house."

"Mars Phil! O Mars Phil!" called the old man.

There was no reply.

Peter looked round the corner of the house, but Phil was nowhere visible. The old man went round to the back yard, and called again, but did not find the child.

"I hyuhs de train comin'; I 'spec's he's gone up ter de railroad track," he said, when he had returned to the front of the house. "I'll run up dere an' fetch 'im back."

"Yes, do, Peter," returned the colonel. "He's probably all right, but you'd better see about him."

Little Phil, seeing his father absorbed in the newspaper, and not wishing to disturb him, had amused himself by going to the gate and looking down the street toward the railroad track. He had been doing this scarcely a moment, when he saw a black cat come out of a neighbour's gate and go down the street.

Phil instantly recalled Uncle Peter's story of the black cat. Perhaps this was the same one!

Phil had often been warned about the railroad.

"Keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, honey," the old man had repeated more than once. "It's as dange'ous as a gun, and a gun is dange'ous widout lock, stock, er bairl: I knowed a man oncet w'at beat 'is wife ter def wid a ramrod, an' wuz hung fer it in a' ole fiel' down by de ha'nted house. Dat gun couldn't hol' powder ner shot, but was dange'ous 'nuff ter kill two folks. So you jes' better keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, chile."

But Phil was a child, with the making of a man, and the wisest of men sometimes forget. For the moment Phil saw nothing but the cat, and wished for nothing more than to talk to it.

So Phil, unperceived by the colonel, set out to overtake the black cat. The cat seemed in no hurry, and Phil had very nearly caught up with him—or her, as the case might be—when the black cat, having reached the railroad siding, walked under a flat car which stood there, and leaping to one of the truck bars, composed itself, presumably for a nap. In order to get close enough to the cat for conversational purposes, Phil stooped under the overhanging end of the car, and kneeled down beside the truck.

"Kitty, Kitty!" he called, invitingly.

The black cat opened her big yellow eyes with every evidence of lazy amiability.

Peter shuffled toward the corner as fast as his rickety old limbs would carry him. When he reached the corner he saw a car standing on the track. There was a brakeman at one end, holding a coupling link in one hand, and a coupling pin in the other, his eye on an engine and train of cars only a rod or two away, advancing to pick up the single car. At the same moment Peter caught sight of little Phil, kneeling under the car at the other end.

Peter shouted, but the brakeman was absorbed in his own task, which required close attention in order to assure his own safety. The engineer on the cab, at the other end of the train, saw an old Negro excitedly gesticulating, and pulled a lever mechanically, but too late to stop the momentum of the train, which was not equipped with air brakes, even if these would have proved effective to stop it in so short a distance.

Just before the two cars came together, Peter threw himself forward to seize the child. As he did so, the cat sprang from the truck bar; the old man stumbled over the cat, and fell across the rail. The car moved only a few feet, but quite far enough to work injury.

A dozen people, including the train crew, quickly gathered. Willing hands drew them out and laid them upon the grass under the spreading elm at the corner of the street. A judge, a merchant and a Negro labourer lifted old Peter's body as tenderly as though it had been that of a beautiful woman. The colonel, somewhat uneasy, he scarcely knew why, had started to limp painfully toward the corner, when he was met by a messenger who informed him of the accident. Forgetting his pain, he hurried to the scene, only to find his heart's delight lying pale, bleeding and unconscious, beside the old Negro who had sacrificed his life to save him.

A doctor, who had been hastily summoned, pronounced Peter dead. Phil showed no superficial injury, save a cut upon the head, from which the bleeding was soon stanched. A Negro's strong arms bore the child to the house, while the bystanders remained about Peter's body until the arrival of Major McLean, recently elected coroner, who had been promptly notified of the accident. Within a few minutes after the officer's appearance, a jury was summoned from among the bystanders, the evidence of the trainmen and several other witnesses was taken, and a verdict of accidental death rendered. There was no suggestion of blame attaching to any one; it had been an accident, pure and simple, which ordinary and reasonable prudence could not have foreseen.

By the colonel's command, the body of his old servant was then conveyed to the house and laid out in the front parlour. Every honour, every token of respect, should be paid to his remains.



Thirty-two

Meanwhile the colonel, forgetting his own hurt, hovered, with several physicians, among them Doctor Price, around the bedside of his child. The slight cut upon the head, the physicians declared, was not, of itself, sufficient to account for the rapid sinking which set in shortly after the boy's removal to the house. There had evidently been some internal injury, the nature of which could not be ascertained. Phil remained unconscious for several hours, but toward the end of the day opened his blue eyes and fixed them upon his father, who was sitting by the bedside.

"Papa," he said, "am I going to die?"

"No, no, Phil," said his father hopefully. "You are going to get well in a few days, I hope."

Phil was silent for a moment, and looked around him curiously. He gave no sign of being in pain.

"Is Miss Laura here?"

"Yes, Phil, she's in the next room, and will be here in a moment."

At that instant Miss Laura came in and kissed him. The caress gave him pleasure, and he smiled sweetly in return.

"Papa, was Uncle Peter hurt?"

"Yes, Phil."

"Where is he, papa? Was he hurt badly?"

"He is lying in another room, Phil, but he is not in any pain."

"Papa," said Phil, after a pause, "if I should die, and if Uncle Peter should die, you'll remember your promise and bury him near me, won't you, dear?"

"Yes, Phil," he said, "but you are not going to die!"

But Phil died, dozing off into a peaceful sleep in which he passed quietly away with a smile upon his face.

It required all the father's fortitude to sustain the blow, with the added agony of self-reproach that he himself had been unwittingly the cause of it. Had he not sent old Peter into the house, the child would not have been left alone. Had he kept his eye upon Phil until Peter's return the child would not have strayed away. He had neglected his child, while the bruised and broken old black man in the room below had given his life to save him. He could do nothing now to show the child his love or Peter his gratitude, and the old man had neither wife nor child in whom the colonel's bounty might find an object. But he would do what he could. He would lay his child's body in the old family lot in the cemetery, among the bones of his ancestors, and there too, close at hand, old Peter should have honourable sepulture. It was his due, and would be the fulfilment of little Phil's last request.

The child was laid out in the parlour, amid a mass of flowers. Miss Laura, for love of him and of the colonel, with her own hands prepared his little body for the last sleep. The undertaker, who hovered around, wished, with a conventional sense of fitness, to remove old Peter's body to a back room. But the colonel said no.

"They died together; together they shall lie here, and they shall be buried together."

He gave instructions as to the location of the graves in the cemetery lot. The undertaker looked thoughtful.

"I hope, sir," said the undertaker, "there will be no objection. It's not customary—there's a coloured graveyard—you might put up a nice tombstone there—and you've been away from here a long time, sir."

"If any one objects," said the colonel, "send him to me. The lot is mine, and I shall do with it as I like. My great-great-grandfather gave the cemetery to the town. Old Peter's skin was black, but his heart was white as any man's! And when a man reaches the grave, he is not far from God, who is no respecter of persons, and in whose presence, on the judgment day, many a white man shall be black, and many a black man white."

The funeral was set for the following afternoon. The graves were to be dug in the morning. The undertaker, whose business was dependent upon public favour, and who therefore shrank from any step which might affect his own popularity, let it be quietly known that Colonel French had given directions to bury Peter in Oak Cemetery.

It was inevitable that there should be some question raised about so novel a proceeding. The colour line in Clarendon, as in all Southern towns, was, on the surface at least, rigidly drawn, and extended from the cradle to the grave. No Negro's body had ever profaned the sacred soil of Oak Cemetery. The protestants laid the matter before the Cemetery trustees, and a private meeting was called in the evening to consider the proposed interment.

White and black worshipped the same God, in different churches. There had been a time when coloured people filled the galleries of the white churches, and white ladies had instilled into black children the principles of religion and good morals. But as white and black had grown nearer to each other in condition, they had grown farther apart in feeling. It was difficult for the poor lady, for instance, to patronise the children of the well-to-do Negro or mulatto; nor was the latter inclined to look up to white people who had started, in his memory, from a position but little higher than his own. In an era of change, the benefits gained thereby seemed scarcely to offset the difficulties of readjustment.

The situation was complicated by a sense of injury on both sides. Cherishing their theoretical equality of citizenship, which they could neither enforce nor forget, the Negroes resented, noisly or silently, as prudence dictated, its contemptuous denial by the whites; and these, viewing this shadowy equality as an insult to themselves, had sought by all the machinery of local law to emphasise and perpetuate their own superiority. The very word "equality" was an offence. Society went back to Egypt and India for its models; to break caste was a greater sin than to break any or all of the ten commandments. White and coloured children studied the same books in different schools. White and black people rode on the same trains in separate cars. Living side by side, and meeting day by day, the law, made and administered by white men, had built a wall between them.

And white and black buried their dead in separate graveyards. Not until they reached God's presence could they stand side by side in any relation of equality. There was a Negro graveyard in Clarendon, where, as a matter of course the coloured dead were buried. It was not an ideal locality. The land was low and swampy, and graves must be used quickly, ere the water collected in them. The graveyard was unfenced, and vagrant cattle browsed upon its rank herbage. The embankment of the railroad encroached upon one side of it, and the passing engines sifted cinders and ashes over the graves. But no Negro had ever thought of burying his dead elsewhere, and if their cemetery was not well kept up, whose fault was it but their own?

The proposition, therefore, of a white man, even of Colonel French's standing, to bury a Negro in Oak Cemetery, was bound to occasion comment, if nothing more. There was indeed more. Several citizens objected to the profanation, and laid their protest before the mayor, who quietly called a meeting of the board of cemetery trustees, of which he was the chairman.

The trustees were five in number. The board, with the single exception of the mayor, was self-perpetuating, and the members had been chosen, as vacancies occurred by death, at long intervals, from among the aristocracy, who had always controlled it. The mayor, a member and chairman of the board by virtue of his office, had sprung from the same class as Fetters, that of the aspiring poor whites, who, freed from the moral incubus of slavery, had by force of numbers and ambition secured political control of the State and relegated not only the Negroes, but the old master class, to political obscurity. A shrewd, capable man was the mayor, who despised Negroes and distrusted aristocrats, and had the courage of his convictions. He represented in the meeting the protesting element of the community.

"Gentlemen," he said, "Colonel French has ordered this Negro to be buried in Oak Cemetery. We all appreciate the colonel's worth, and what he is doing for the town. But he has lived at the North for many years, and has got somewhat out of our way of thinking. We do not want to buy the prosperity of this town at the price of our principles. The attitude of the white people on the Negro question is fixed and determined for all time, and nothing can ever alter it. To bury this Negro in Oak Cemetery is against our principles."

"The mayor's statement of the rule is quite correct," replied old General Thornton, a member of the board, "and not open to question. But all rules have their exceptions. It was against the law, for some years before the war, to manumit a slave; but an exception to that salutary rule was made in case a Negro should render some great service to the State or the community. You will recall that when, in a sister State, a Negro climbed the steep roof of St. Michael's church and at the risk of his own life saved that historic structure, the pride of Charleston, from destruction by fire, the muncipality granted him his freedom."

"And we all remember," said Mr. Darden, another of the trustees, "we all remember, at least I'm sure General Thornton does, old Sally, who used to belong to the McRae family, and was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and who, because of her age and infirmities—she was hard of hearing and too old to climb the stairs to the gallery—was given a seat in front of the pulpit, on the main floor."

"That was all very well," replied the mayor, stoutly, "when the Negroes belonged to you, and never questioned your authority. But times are different now. They think themselves as good as we are. We had them pretty well in hand until Colonel French came around, with his schools, and his high wages, and now they are getting so fat and sassy that there'll soon be no living with them. The last election did something, but we'll have to do something more, and that soon, to keep them in their places. There's one in jail now, alive, who has shot and disfigured and nearly killed two good white men, and such an example of social equality as burying one in a white graveyard will demoralise them still further. We must preserve the purity and prestige of our race, and we can only do it by keeping the Negroes down."

"After all," said another member, "the purity of our race is not apt to suffer very seriously from the social equality of a graveyard."

"And old Peter will be pretty effectually kept down, wherever he is buried," added another.

These sallies provoked a smile which lightened the tension. A member suggested that Colonel French be sent for.

"It seems a pity to disturb him in his grief," said another.

"It's only a couple of squares," suggested another. "Let's call in a body and pay our respects. We can bring up the matter incidentally, while there."

The muscles of the mayor's chin hardened.

"Colonel French has never been at my house," he said, "and I shouldn't care to seem to intrude."

"Come on, mayor," said Mr. Darden, taking the official by the arm, "these fine distinctions are not becoming in the presence of death. The colonel will be glad to see you."

The mayor could not resist this mark of intimacy on the part of one of the old aristocracy, and walked somewhat proudly through the street arm in arm with Mr. Darden. They paid their respects to the colonel, who was bearing up, with the composure to be expected of a man of strong will and forceful character, under a grief of which he was exquisitely sensible. Touched by a strong man's emotion, which nothing could conceal, no one had the heart to mention, in the presence of the dead, the object of their visit, and they went away without giving the colonel any inkling that his course had been seriously criticised. Nor was the meeting resumed after they left the house, even the mayor seeming content to let the matter go by default.



Thirty-three

Fortune favoured Caxton in the matter of the note. Fetters was in Clarendon the following morning. Caxton saw him passing, called him into his office, and produced the note.

"That's no good," said Fetters contemptuously. "It was outlawed yesterday. I suppose you allowed I'd forgotten it. On the contrary, I've a memorandum of it in my pocketbook, and I struck it off the list last night. I always pay my lawful debts, when they're properly demanded. If this note had been presented yesterday, I'd have paid it. To-day it's too late. It ain't a lawful debt."

"Do you really mean to say, Mr. Fetters, that you have deliberately robbed those poor women of this money all these years, and are not ashamed of it, not even when you're found out, and that you are going to take refuge behind the statute?"

"Now, see here, Mr. Caxton," returned Fetters, without apparent emotion, "you want to be careful about the language you use. I might sue you for slander. You're a young man, that hopes to have a future and live in this county, where I expect to live and have law business done long after some of your present clients have moved away. I didn't owe the estate of John Treadwell one cent—you ought to be lawyer enough to know that. He owed me money, and paid me with a note. I collected the note. I owed him money and paid it with a note. Whoever heard of anybody's paying a note that wasn't presented?"

"It's a poor argument, Mr. Fetters. You would have let those ladies starve to death before you would have come forward and paid that debt."

"They've never asked me for charity, so I wasn't called on to offer it. And you know now, don't you, that if I'd paid the amount of that note, and then it had turned up afterward in somebody else's hands, I'd have had to pay it over again; now wouldn't I?"

Caxton could not deny it. Fetters had robbed the Treadwell estate, but his argument was unanswerable.

"Yes," said Caxton, "I suppose you would."

"I'm sorry for the women," said Fetters, "and I've stood ready to pay that note all these years, and it ain't my fault that it hasn't been presented. Now it's outlawed, and you couldn't expect a man to just give away that much money. It ain't a lawful debt, and the law's good enough for me."

"You're awfully sorry for the ladies, aren't you?" said Caxton, with thinly veiled sarcasm.

"I surely am; I'm honestly sorry for them."

"And you'd pay the note if you had to, wouldn't you?" asked Caxton.

"I surely would. As I say, I always pay my legal debts."

"All right," said Caxton triumphantly, "then you'll pay this. I filed suit against you yesterday, which takes the case out of the statute."

Fetters concealed his discomfiture.

"Well," he said, with quiet malignity, "I've nothing more to say till I consult my lawyer. But I want to tell you one thing. You are ruining a fine career by standing in with this Colonel French. I hear his son was killed to-day. You can tell him I say it's a judgment on him; for I hold him responsible for my son's condition. He came down here and tried to demoralise the labour market. He put false notions in the niggers' heads. Then he got to meddling with my business, trying to get away a nigger whose time I had bought. He insulted my agent Turner, and came all the way down to Sycamore and tried to bully me into letting the nigger loose, and of course I wouldn't be bullied. Afterwards, when I offered to let the nigger go, the colonel wouldn't have it so. I shall always believe he bribed one of my men to get the nigger off, and then turned him loose to run amuck among the white people and shoot my boy and my overseer. It was a low-down performance, and unworthy of a gentleman. No really white man would treat another white man so. You can tell him I say it's a judgment that's fallen on him to-day, and that it's not the last one, and that he'll be sorrier yet that he didn't stay where he was, with his nigger-lovin' notions, instead of comin' back down here to make trouble for people that have grown up with the State and made it what it is."

Caxton, of course, did not deliver the message. To do so would have been worse taste than Fetters had displayed in sending it. Having got the best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had promised so much that was good. His own future had been planned with reference to him. Now he was dead, and the bereaved father gave way to his grief.



Thirty-four

The funeral took place next day, from the Episcopal Church, in which communion the little boy had been baptised, and of which old Peter had always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every Sunday morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people had deserted it for churches of their own. On this occasion Peter had, for the first time, a place on the main floor, a little to one side of the altar, in front of which, banked with flowers, stood the white velvet casket which contained all that was mortal of little Phil. The same beautiful sermon answered for both. In touching words, the rector, a man of culture, taste and feeling, and a faithful servant of his Master, spoke of the sweet young life brought to so untimely an end, and pointed the bereaved father to the best source of consolation. He paid a brief tribute to the faithful servant and humble friend, to whom, though black and lowly, the white people of the town were glad to pay this signal tribute of respect and appreciation for his heroic deed. The attendance at the funeral, while it might have been larger, was composed of the more refined and cultured of the townspeople, from whom, indeed, the church derived most of its membership and support; and the gallery overflowed with coloured people, whose hearts had warmed to the great honour thus paid to one of their race. Four young white men bore Phil's body and the six pallbearers of old Peter were from among the best white people of the town.

The double interment was made in Oak Cemetery. Simultaneously both bodies were lowered to their last resting-place. Simultaneously ashes were consigned to ashes and dust to dust. The earth was heaped above the graves. The mound above little Phil's was buried with flowers, and old Peter's was not neglected.

Beyond the cemetery wall, a few white men of the commoner sort watched the proceedings from a distance, and eyed with grim hostility the Negroes who had followed the procession. They had no part nor parcel in this sentimental folly, nor did they approve of it—in fact they disapproved of it very decidedly. Among them was the colonel's discharged foreman, Jim Green, who was pronounced in his denunciation.

"Colonel French is an enemy of his race," he declared to his sympathetic following. "He hires niggers when white men are idle; and pays them more than white men who work are earning. And now he is burying them with white people."

When the group around the grave began to disperse, the little knot of disgruntled spectators moved sullenly away. In the evening they might have been seen, most of them, around Clay Jackson's barroom. Turner, the foreman at Fetters's convict farm, was in town that evening, and Jackson's was his favourite haunt. For some reason Turner was more sociable than usual, and liquor flowed freely, at his expense. There was a great deal of intemperate talk, concerning the Negro in jail for shooting Haines and young Fetters, and concerning Colonel French as the protector of Negroes and the enemy of white men.



Thirty-five

At the same time that the colonel, dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, had returned to his empty house to nurse his grief, another series of events was drawing to a climax in the dilapidated house on Mink Run. Even while the preacher was saying the last words over little Phil's remains, old Malcolm Dudley's illness had taken a sudden and violent turn. He had been sinking for several days, but the decline had been gradual, and there had seemed no particular reason for alarm. But during the funeral exercises Ben had begun to feel uneasy—some obscure premonition warned him to hurry homeward.

As soon as the funeral was over he spoke to Dr. Price, who had been one of the pallbearers, and the doctor had promised to be at Mink Run in a little while. Ben rode home as rapidly as he could; as he went up the lane toward the house a Negro lad came forward to take charge of the tired horse, and Ben could see from the boy's expression that he had important information to communicate.

"Yo' uncle is monst'ous low, sir," said the boy. "You bettah go in an' see 'im quick, er you'll be too late. Dey ain' nobody wid 'im but ole Aun' Viney."

Ben hurried into the house and to his uncle's room, where Malcolm Dudley lay dying. Outside, the sun was setting, and his red rays, shining through the trees into the open window, lit the stage for the last scene of this belated drama. When Ben entered the room, the sweat of death had gathered on the old man's brow, but his eyes, clear with the light of reason, were fixed upon old Viney, who stood by the bedside. The two were evidently so absorbed in their own thoughts as to be oblivious to anything else, and neither of them paid the slightest attention to Ben, or to the scared Negro lad, who had followed him and stood outside the door. But marvellous to hear, Viney was talking, strangely, slowly, thickly, but passionately and distinctly.

"You had me whipped," she said. "Do you remember that? You had me whipped—whipped—whipped—by a poor white dog I had despised and spurned! You had said that you loved me, and you had promised to free me—and you had me whipped! But I have had my revenge!"

Her voice shook with passion, a passion at which Ben wondered. That his uncle and she had once been young he knew, and that their relations had once been closer than those of master and servant; but this outbreak of feeling from the wrinkled old mulattress seemed as strange and weird to Ben as though a stone image had waked to speech. Spellbound, he stood in the doorway, and listened to this ghost of a voice long dead.

"Your uncle came with the money and left it, and went away. Only he and I knew where it was. But I never told you! I could have spoken at any time for twenty-five years, but I never told you! I have waited—I have waited for this moment! I have gone into the woods and fields and talked to myself by the hour, that I might not forget how to talk—and I have waited my turn, and it is here and now!"

Ben hung breathlessly upon her words. He drew back beyond her range of vision, lest she might see him, and the spell be broken. Now, he thought, she would tell where the gold was hidden!

"He came," she said, "and left the gold—two heavy bags of it, and a letter for you. An hour later he came back and took it all away, except the letter! The money was here one hour, but in that hour you had me whipped, and for that you have spent twenty-five years in looking for nothing—something that was not here! I have had my revenge! For twenty-five years I have watched you look for—nothing; have seen you waste your time, your property, your life, your mind—for nothing! For ah, Mars' Ma'colm, you had me whipped—by another man!"

A shadow of reproach crept into the old man's eyes, over which the mists of death were already gathering.

"Yes, Viney," he whispered, "you have had your revenge! But I was sorry, Viney, for what I did, and you were not. And I forgive you, Viney; but you are unforgiving—even in the presence of death."

His voice failed, and his eyes closed for the last time. When she saw that he was dead, by a strange revulsion of feeling the wall of outraged pride and hatred and revenge, built upon one brutal and bitterly repented mistake, and labouriously maintained for half a lifetime in her woman's heart that even slavery could not crush, crumbled and fell and let pass over it in one great and final flood the pent-up passions of the past. Bursting into tears—strange tears from eyes that had long forgot to weep—old Viney threw herself down upon her knees by the bedside, and seizing old Malcolm's emaciated hand in both her own, covered it with kisses, fervent kisses, the ghosts of the passionate kisses of their distant youth.

With a feeling that his presence was something like sacrilege, Ben stole away and left her with her dead—the dead master and the dead past—and thanked God that he lived in another age, and had escaped this sin.

As he wandered through the old house, a veil seemed to fall from his eyes. How old everything was, how shrunken and decayed! The sheen of the hidden gold had gilded the dilapidated old house, the neglected plantation, his own barren life. Now that it was gone, things appeared in their true light. Fortunately he was young enough to retrieve much of what had been lost. When the old man was buried, he would settle the estate, sell the land, make some provision for Aunt Viney, and then, with what was left, go out into the world and try to make a place for himself and Graciella. For life intrudes its claims even into the presence of death.

When the doctor came, a little later, Ben went with him into the death chamber. Viney was still kneeling by her master's bedside, but strangely still and silent. The doctor laid his hand on hers and old Malcolm's, which had remained clasped together.

"They are both dead," he declared. "I knew their story; my father told it to me many years ago."

Ben related what he had overheard.

"I'm not surprised," said the doctor. "My father attended her when she had the stroke, and after. He always maintained that Viney could speak—if she had wished to speak."



Thirty-six

The colonel's eyes were heavy with grief that night, and yet he lay awake late, and with his sorrow were mingled many consoling thoughts. The people, his people, had been kind, aye, more than kind. Their warm hearts had sympathised with his grief. He had sometimes been impatient of their conservatism, their narrowness, their unreasoning pride of opinion; but in his bereavement they had manifested a feeling that it would be beautiful to remember all the days of his life. All the people, white and black, had united to honour his dead.

He had wished to help them—had tried already. He had loved the town as the home of his ancestors, which enshrined their ashes. He would make of it a monument to mark his son's resting place. His fight against Fetters and what he represented should take on a new character; henceforward it should be a crusade to rescue from threatened barbarism the land which contained the tombs of his loved ones. Nor would he be alone in the struggle, which he now clearly foresaw would be a long one. The dear, good woman he had asked to be his wife could help him. He needed her clear, spiritual vision; and in his lifelong sorrow he would need her sympathy and companionship; for she had loved the child and would share his grief. She knew the people better than he, and was in closer touch with them; she could help him in his schemes of benevolence, and suggest new ways to benefit the people. Phil's mother was buried far away, among her own people; could he consult her, he felt sure she would prefer to remain there. Here she would be an alien note; and when Laura died she could lie with them and still be in her own place.

"Have you heard the news, sir," asked the housekeeper, when he came down to breakfast the next morning.

"No, Mrs. Hughes, what is it?"

"They lynched the Negro who was in jail for shooting young Mr. Fetters and the other man."

The colonel hastily swallowed a cup of coffee and went down town. It was only a short walk. Already there were excited crowds upon the street, discussing the events of the night. The colonel sought Caxton, who was just entering his office.