saddles. Three white figures resolutely stood their ground.

"What's the meaning of this, sir?" Norton sternly demanded of the man who still held the switch.

"Just a little fun, major," was the sheepish answer.

"A dangerous piece of business."

"For God's sake, save me, Major Norton!" Peeler cried, suddenly waking from the spell of fear. "They've got me, sir—and it's just like I told you, they're all preachers—I'm a goner!"

Norton sprang from his horse and faced the three white figures.

"Who's in command of this crowd?"

"I am, sir!" came the quick answer from a stalwart masquerader who suddenly stepped from the shadows.

Norton recognized the young cabinet-maker's voice, and spoke in low tense tones:

"By whose authority are you using these disguises, to-night?"

"It's none of your business!"

The tall sinewy figure suddenly stiffened, stepped close and peered into the eyes of the speaker's mask:

"Does my word go here to-night or must I call out a division of the Klan?"

A moment's hesitation and the eyes behind the mask fell:

"All right, sir—nothing but a boyish frolic," muttered the leader apologetically.

"Let this be the end of such nonsense," Norton said with a quiet drawl. "If I catch you fellows on a raid like this again I'll hang your leader to the first limb I find—good night."

A whistle blew and the beat of horses' hoofs along the narrow road told their hurried retreat.

Norton loosed the cords and led old Peeler to his house. As the fat, wobbling legs mounted the steps the younger man paused at a sound from behind and before he could turn a girl sprang from the shadows into his arms, and slipped to her knees, sobbing hysterically:

"Save me!—they're going to beat me—they'll beat me to death—don't let them—please—please don't let them!"

By the light from the window he saw that her hair was a deep rich red with the slightest tendency to curl and her wide dilated eyes a soft greenish grey.

He was too astonished to speak for a moment and Peeler hastened to say:

"That's our little gal, Cleo—that is—I—mean—of—course—it's Lucy's gal! She's just home from school and she's scared to death and I don't blame her!"

The girl clung to her rescuer with desperate grip, pressing her trembling form close with each convulsive sob.

The man drew the soft arms down, held them a moment and looked into the dumb frightened face. He was surprised at her unusual beauty. Her skin was a delicate creamy yellow, almost white, and her cheeks were tinged with the brownish red of ripe apple. As he looked in to her eyes he fancied that he saw a young leopardess from an African jungle looking at him through the lithe, graceful form of a Southern woman.

And then something happened in the shadows that stood out forever in his memory of that day as the turning point of his life.

Laughing at her fears, he suddenly lifted his hand and gently stroked the tangled red hair, smoothing it back from her forehead with a movement instinctive, and irresistible as he would have smoothed the fur of a yellow Persian kitten.

Surprised at his act, he turned without a word and left the place.

And all the way home, through the solemn starlit night, he brooded over the strange meeting with this extraordinary girl. He forgot his fight. One thing only stood out with increasing vividness—the curious and irresistible impulse that caused him to stroke her hair. Personally he had always loathed the Southern white man who stooped and crawled through the shadows to meet such women. She was a negress and he knew it, and yet the act was instinctive and irresistible.

Why?

He asked himself the question a hundred times, and the longer he faced it the angrier he became at his stupid folly. For hours he lay awake, seeing in the darkness only the face of this girl.

CHAPTER II

CLEO ENTERS

The conference of the carpetbagger with the little Governor proved more ominous than even Norton had feared. The blow struck was so daring, so swift and unexpected it stunned for a moment the entire white race.

When the editor reached his office on the second morning after the raid, his desk was piled with telegrams from every quarter of the state. The Governor had issued a proclamation disarming every white military company and by wire had demanded the immediate surrender of their rifles to the negro Adjutant-General. The same proclamation had created an equal number of negro companies who were to receive these guns and equipments.

The negroid state Government would thus command an armed black guard of fifty thousand men and leave the white race without protection.

Evidently His Excellency was a man of ambitions. It was rumored that he aspired to the Vice-Presidency and meant to win the honor by a campaign of such brilliance that the solid negro-ruled South would back him in the National Convention.

Beyond a doubt, this act was the first step in a daring attempt inspired by the radical fanatics in Congress to destroy the structure of white civilization in the South.

And the Governor's resources were apparently boundless. President Johnson, though a native Southerner, was a puppet now in the hands of his powerful enemies who dominated Congress. These men boldly proclaimed their purpose to make the South negro territory by confiscating the property of the whites and giving it to the negroes. Their bill to do this, House Bill Number Twenty-nine, introduced by the government leader, Thaddeus Stevens, was already in the calendar and Mr. Stevens was pressing for its passage with all the skill of a trained politician inspired by the fiercest hate. The army had been sent back into the prostrate South to enforce the edicts of Congress and the negro state government could command all the Federal troops needed for any scheme concocted.

But the little Governor had a plan up his sleeve by which he proposed to startle even the Black Radical Administration at Washington. He was going to stamp out "Rebellion" without the aid of Federal troops, reserving his right to call them finally as a last resort. That they were ready at his nod gave him the moral support of their actual presence.

That any man born of a Southern mother and reared in the South under the conditions of refinement and culture, of the high ideals and the courage of the old régime, could fall so low as to use this proclamation, struck Norton at first as impossible. He refused to believe it. There must be some misunderstanding. He sent a messenger to the Capitol for a copy of the document before he was fully convinced.

And then he laughed in sheer desperation at the farce-tragedy to which the life of a brave people had been reduced. It was his business as an editor to record the daily history of the times. For a moment in imagination he stood outside his office and looked at his work.

"Future generations simply can't be made to believe it!" he exclaimed. "It's too grotesque to be credible even to-day."

It had never occurred to him that the war was unreasonable. Its passions, its crushing cost, its bloodstained fields, its frightful cruelties were of the great movements of the race from a lower to a higher order of life. Progress could only come through struggle. War was the struggle which had to be when two great moral forces clashed. One must die, the other live. A great issue had to be settled in the Civil War, an issue raised by the creation of the Constitution itself, an issue its creators had not dared to face. And each generation of compromisers and interpreters had put it off and put