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

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

"You have suffered," said Tim. man suffer. Times have changed. white man said,

"John, come black my boots!"

"Now let the white

In the old days the

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

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

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

In San Do

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

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

CHAPTER XII

RED SNOW DROPS

HE spirit of anarchy was in the tainted air. The bonds that held society were loosened.

TH

Gov

ernment threatened to become organised crime instead of the organised virtue of the community.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tears.

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

"Who knowest the power of thine anger?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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