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THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS

Book One-Legree's Regime

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CHAPTER I

A HERO RETURNS

N the field of Appomattox General Lee was waiting the return of a courier. His handsome face

was clouded by the deepening shadows of defeat. Rumours of surrender had spread like wildfire, and the ranks of his once invincible army were breaking into chaos.

Suddenly the measured tread of a brigade was heard marching into action, every movement quick with the perfect discipline, the fire, and the passion of the first days of the triumphant Confederacy.

"What brigade is that?" he sharply asked. "Cox's North Carolina," an aid replied.

As the troops swept steadily past the General, his eyes filled with tears, he lifted his hat, and exclaimed,

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God bless old North Carolina!"

The display of matchless discipline perhaps recalled to the great commander that awful day of Gettysburg when the Twenty-sixth North Carolina infantry had charged with 820 men rank and file and left 704 dead and wounded on the ground that night. Company F from Campbell county charged with 91 men and lost every man killed

and wounded. down, and fourteen times raised again. The last time they fell from the hands of gallant Colonel Harry Burgwyn, twenty-one years old, commander of the regiment, who seized them and was holding them aloft when instantly killed.

Fourteen times their colours were shot

The last act of the tragedy had closed. Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Greensboro on April 26th, 1865, and the Civil War ended,-the bloodiest, most destructive war the world ever saw. The earth had been baptized in the blood of five hundred thousand heroic soldiers, and a new map of the world had been made.

The ragged troops were straggling home from Greensboro and Appomattox along the country roads. There were no mails, telegraph lines or railroads. The men were telling the story of the surrender. White-faced women dressed in coarse homespun met them at their doors and with quivering lips heard the news.

Surrender!

A new word in the vocabulary of the South-a word so terrible in its meaning that the date of its birth was to be the landmark of time. Henceforth all events would be reckoned from this; "before the Surrender," or "after the Surrender."

Desolation everywhere marked the end of an era. Not a cow, a sheep, a horse, a fowl, or a sign of animal life save here and there a stray dog, to be seen. Grim chimneys marked the site of once fair homes. Hedgerows of tangled blackberry briar and bushes showed where a fence had stood before war breathed upon the land with its breath of fire and harrowed it with teeth of steel.

These tramping soldiers looked worn and dispirited. Their shoulders stooped, they were dirty and hungry. They looked worse than they felt, and they felt that the end of the world had come.

They had answered those awful commands to charge without a murmur; and then, rolled back upon a sea of blood, they charged again over the dead bodies of their comrades. When repulsed the second time and the mad cry for a third charge from some desperate commander had rung over the field, still without a word they pulled their old ragged hats down close over their eyes as though to shut out the hail of bullets, and, through level sheets of blinding flame, walked straight into the jaws of hell. This had been easy. Now their feet seemed to falter as though they were not sure of the road.

In every one of these soldier's hearts, and over all the earth hung the shadow of the freed Negro, transformed by the exigency of war from a Chattel to be bought and sold into a possible Beast to be feared and w guarded. Around this dusky figure every white man's soul was keeping its grim vigil.

North Carolina, the typical American Democracy, had loved peace and sought in vain to stand between the mad passions of the Cavalier of the South and the Puritan fanatic of the North. She entered the war at last with a sorrowful heart but a soul clear in the sense of tragic duty. She sent more boys to the front than any other state of the Confederacy-and left more dead on the field. She made the last charge and fired the last volley for Lee's army at Appomattox.

These were the ragged country boys who were slowly tramping homeward. The group whose fortunes we are to follow were marching toward the little village of Hambright that nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge under the shadows of King's Mountain. They were the sons of the men who had first declared their independence of Great Britain in America and had made their country a hornet's nest for Lord Cornwallis in the darkest days of the cause of Liberty. What tongue

can tell the tragic story of their humble home coming?

In rich Northern cities could be heard the boom of guns, the scream of steam whistles, the shouts of surging hosts greeting returning regiments crowned with victory. From every flag-staff fluttered proudly the flag that our fathers had lifted in the sky-the flag that had never met defeat.

It is little wonder that in this hour of triumph the world should forget the defeated soldiers who without a dollar in their pockets were tramping to their ruined homes.

Yet Nature did not seem to know of sorrow or death. Birds were singing their love songs from the hedgerows, the fields were clothed in gorgeous robes of wild flowers beneath which forget-me-nots spread their contrasting hues of blue, while life was busy in bud and starting leaf reclothing the blood-stained earth in radiant beauty.

As the sun was setting behind the peaks of the Blue Ridge, a giant negro entered the village of Hambright. He walked rapidly down one of the principal streets, passed the court house square unobserved in the gathering twilight, and three blocks further along paused before a law-office that stood in the corner of a beautiful lawn filled with shrubbery and flowers.

"Dars de ole home, praise de Lawd! En now I'se erfeard ter see my Missy, en tell her Marse Charles's daid. Hit'll kill her! Lawd hab mussy on my po black soul! How kin I!"

He walked softly up the alley that led toward the kitchen past the "big" house, which after all was a modest cottage boarded up and down with weatherstrips nestling amid a labyrinth of climbing roses, honeysuckles, fruit bearing shrubbery and balsam trees. The negro had no difficulty in concealing his movements as he passed.

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"Lordy, dars Missy watchin' at de winder! How pale she look! En she wuz de purties' bride in de two counties! God-der-mighty, I mus' git somebody ter he'p me! I nebber tell her! She drap daid right 'fore my eyes, en hant me twell I die. I run fetch de Preacher, Marse John Durham, he kin tell her.”

A few moments later he was knocking at the door of the parsonage of the Baptist church.

"Nelse! At last! I knew you'd come!"

"Yassir, Marse John, I'se home. Hit's me."

66 'And your Master is dead. I was sure of it, but I never dared tell your Mistress. You came for me to help you tell her. People said you had gone over into the promised land of freedom and forgotten your people; but Nelse, I never believed it of you and I'm doubly glad to shake your hand to-night because you've brought a brave message from heroic lips and because you have brought a braver message in your honest black face of faith and duty and life and love."

"Thankee Marse John, I wuz erbleeged ter come home."

The Preacher stepped into the hall and called the servant from the kitchen.

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Aunt Mary, when your Mistress returns tell her I've received an urgent call and will not be at home for supper."

"I'll be ready in a minute, Nelse," he said, as he disappeared into the study. When he reached his desk, he paused and looked about the room in a helpless way as though trying to find some half forgotten volume in the rows of books that lined the walls and lay in piles on his desk and tables. He knelt beside the desk and prayed. When he rose there was a soft light in his eyes that were half filled with tears.

Standing in the dim light of his study he was a strik

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