T CHAPTER III THE PARTING OF THE WAYS HE discovery of the Captain of the African Guards lying in his full uniform in Lynch's yard sent a thrill of terror to the triumphant leagues. Across the breast of the body was pinned a scrap of paper on which was written in red ink the letters K. K. K. It was the first actual evidence of the existence of this dreaded order in Ulster county. The First Lieutenant of the Guards assumed command and held the full company in their armory under arms day and night. Beneath his door he had found a notice which was also nailed on the court-house. It appeared in the Piedmont Eagle and in rapid succession in every newspaper not under Negro influence in the state. It read as follows: "HEADQUARTERS OF REALM No. 4. "GENERAL ORDER NO. 1. "The Negro Militia now organised in this State threatens the extinction of civilisation. They have avowed their purpose to make war upon and exterminate the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation which is now the sole guardian of Society. All negroes are hereby given forty-eight hours from the publication of this notice in their respective counties to surrender their arms at the court-house door. Those who refuse must take the consequences. "By order of the G. D. of Realm No. 4. "By the Grand Scribe." The white people of Piedmont read this notice with a thrill of exultant joy. Men walked the streets with an erect bearing which said without words: "Stand out of the way." For the first time since the dawn of Black Rule negroes began to yield to white men and women the right of way on the streets. On the day following, the old Commoner sent for Phil. "What is the latest news?" he asked. "The town is in a fever of excitement-not over the discovery in Lynch's yard-but over the blacker rumour that Marion and her mother committed suicide to conceal an assault by this fiend." "A trumped-up lie," said the old man emphatically "It's true, sir. I'll take Doctor Cameron's word for it." "You have just come from the Camerons?" "Yes." "Let it be your last visit. The Camerons are on the road to the gallows, father and son. Lynch informs me that the murder committed last night, and the insolent notice nailed on the court-house door, could have come only from their brain. They are the hereditary leaders of these people. They alone would have had the audacity to fling this crime into the teeth of the world and threaten worse. We are face to face with Southern barbarism. Every man now to his own standard! The house of Stoneman can have no part with midnight assassins." "Nor with black barbarians, father. It is a question of who possesses the right of life and death over the citizen, the organised virtue of the community, or its organised crime. You have mistaken for death the patience of a generous people. We call ourselves the champions of liberty. Yet for less than they have suffered, kings have lost their heads and empires perished before the wrath of freemen." "My boy, this is not a question for argument between us," said the father with stern emphasis. "This conspiracy of terror and assassination threatens to shatter my work to atoms. The election on which turns the destiny of Congress, and the success or failure of my life, is but a few weeks away. Unless this foul conspiracy is crushed, I am ruined, and the Nation falls again beneath the heel of a slaveholders' oligarchy." "Your nightmare of a slaveholders' oligarchy does not disturb me." "At least you will have the decency to break your affair with Margaret Cameron pending the issue of my struggle of life and death with her father and brother?" "Never." "Then I will do it for you." "I warn you, sir," Phil cried, with anger, "that if it comes to an issue of race against race, I am a white man. The ghastly tragedy of the condition of society here is something for which the people of the South are no longer responsible "I'll take the responsibility!" growled the old cynic. |