"Do your duty, blacksmith," said the officer, turning his back and walking toward the door.

The negro advanced with the chains cautiously, and attempted to snap one of the shackles on the doctor's right arm.

With sudden maniac frenzy, Dr. Cameron seized the negro by the throat, hurled him to the floor, and backed against the wall.

The Lieutenant approached and remonstrated:

"Why compel me to add the indignity of personal violence? You must submit."

"I am your prisoner," fiercely retorted the doctor. "I have been a soldier in the armies of America, and I know how to die. Kill me, and my last breath will be a blessing. But while I have life to resist, for myself and for my people, this thing shall not be done!"

The Lieutenant called a sergeant and a file of soldiers, and the sergeant stepped forward to seize the prisoner. Dr. Cameron sprang on him with the ferocity of a tiger, seized his musket, and attempted to wrench it from his grasp.

The men closed in on him. A short passionate fight, and the slender, proud, gray-haired man lay panting on the floor.

Four powerful assailants held his hands and feet, and the negro smith, with a grin, secured the rivet on the right ankle and turned the key in the padlock on the left.

As he drove the rivet into the shackle on his left arm, a spurt of bruised blood from the old Mexican War wound stained the iron.

Dr. Cameron lay for a moment in a stupor. At length he slowly rose. The clank of the heavy chains seemed to choke him with horror. He sank on the floor, covering his face with his hands and groaned:

"The shame! The shame! O God, that I might have died! My poor, poor wife!"

Captain Gilbert entered and said with a sneer:

"I will take you now to see your wife and friends if you would like to call before setting out for Columbia." The doctor paid no attention to him.

"Will you follow me while I lead you through this town, to show them their chief has fallen, or will you force me to drag you?"

Receiving no answer, he roughly drew the doctor to his feet, held him by the arm, and led him thus in halfunconscious stupor through the principal street, followed by a drove of negroes. He ordered a squad of troops to meet him at the depot. Not a white man appeared on the streets. When one saw the sight and heard the clank of those chains, there was a sudden tightening of the lip, a clinched fist, and an averted face.

When they approached the hotel, Mrs. Cameron ran to meet him, her face white as death.

In silence she kissed his lips, kissed each shackle on his wrists, took her handkerchief and wiped the bruised blood from the old wound on his arm the iron had opened afresh, and then with a look, beneath which the Captain shrank, she said in low tones:

"Do your work quickly. You have but a few moments to get out of this town with your prisoner. I have sent

a friend to hold my son. If he comes before you go, he will kill you on sight as he would a mad dog.”

With a sneer, the Captain passed the hotel and led the doctor, still in half-unconscious stupor, toward the depot down past his old slave-quarters. He had given his negroes who remained faithful each a cabin and a lot. They looked on in awed silence as the Captain proclaimed:

"Fellow citizens, you are the equal of any white man who walks the ground. The white man's day is done. Your turn has come."

As he passed Jake's cabin, the doctor's faithful man stepped suddenly in front of him, looking at the Captain out of the corners of his eyes, and asked:

"Is I yo' equal?"

"Yes."

"Des lak any white man?" "Exactly."

The negro's fist suddenly shot into Gilbert's nose with the crack of a sledge-hammer, laying him stunned on the pavement.

"Den take dat f'um yo' equal, d-m you!" he cried, bending over his prostrate figure. "I'll show you how to treat my ole marster, you low-down slue-footed devil!"

The stirring little drama roused the doctor, and he turned to his servant with his old-time courtesy, and said: "Thank you, Jake."

"Come in here, Marse Richard; I knock dem things off'n you in er minute, 'en I get you outen dis town in er jiffy."