his arm around his old comrade and whispered:
"The cunning of the fox and the courage of the lion now, Mac! It was easy for our boys to die in battle while guns were thundering, fifes screaming, drums beating and the banners waving. You and I have something harder to do – we've got to live – our watchword, 'The cunning of the fox and the courage of the lion!' I've some dangerous work to do pretty soon. The little Scalawag Governor is getting ready for us – "
"I want that job!" MacArthur cried eagerly.
"I'll let you know when the time comes."
The farmer smiled:
"I am a Scotchman – ain't I?"
"And a good one, too!"
With his hand on the door, the rugged face aflame with patriotic fire, he slowly repeated:
"The cunning of the fox and the courage of the lion! – And by the living God, we'll win this time, boy!"
Norton heard him laugh aloud as he hurried down the stairs. Gazing again from his window at the black clouds of negroes floating across the Square, he slowly muttered:
"Yes, we'll win this time! – but twenty years from now – I wonder!"
He took up the little black coffin and smiled at the perfection of its workmanship:
"I think I know the young gentleman who made that and he may give me trouble."
He thrust the thing into a drawer, seized his hat, strolled down a side street and slowly passed the cabinet shop of the workman whom he suspected. It was closed. Evidently the master had business outside. It was barely possible, of course, that he had gone to the galleries of the Capitol to hear the long-expected message of the Governor against the Klan. The galleries had been packed for the past two sessions in anticipation of this threatened message. The Capital city was only a town of five thousand white inhabitants and four thousand blacks. Rumors of impending political movements flew from house to house with the swiftness of village gossip.
He walked to the Capitol building by a quiet street. As he passed through the echoing corridor the rotund figure of Schlitz, the Carpetbagger, leader of the House of Representatives, emerged from the Governor's office.
The red face flushed a purple hue as his eye rested on his arch-enemy of the Eagle and Phoenix. He tried to smile and nodded to Norton. His smile was answered by a cold stare and a quickened step.
Schlitz had been a teamster's scullion in the Union Army. He was not even an army cook, but a servant of servants. He was now the master of the Legislature of a great Southern state and controlled its black, ignorant members with a snap of his bloated fingers. There was but one man Norton loathed with greater intensity and that was the shrewd little Scalawag Governor, the native traitor who had betrayed his people to win office. A conference of these two cronies was always an ill omen for the state.
He hurried up the winding stairs, pushed his way into a corner of the crowded galleries from which he could see every face and searched in vain for his young workman.
He stood for a moment, looked down on the floor of the House and watched a Black Parliament at work making laws to govern the children of the men who had created the Republic – watched them through fetid smoke, the vapors of stale whiskey and the deafening roar of half-drunken brutes as they voted millions in taxes, their leaders had already stolen.
The red blood rushed to his cheeks and the big veins on his slender swarthy neck stood out for a moment like drawn cords.
He hurried down to the Court House Square, walked with long, leisurely stride through the thinning crowds, and paused before a vacant lot on the opposite side of the street. A dozen or more horses were still tied to the racks provided for the accommodation of countrymen.
"Funny," he muttered, "farmers start home before sundown, and it's dusk – I wonder if it's possible!"
He crossed the street, strolled carelessly among the horses and noted that their saddles had not been removed and the still more significant fact that their saddle blankets were unusually thick. Only an eye trained to observe this fact would have noticed it. He lifted the edge of one of the blankets and saw the white and scarlet edges of a Klan costume. It was true. The young dare-devil who had sent that message to old Peeler had planned an unauthorized raid. Only a crowd of youngsters bent on a night's fun, he knew; and yet the act at this moment meant certain anarchy unless he nipped it in the bud. The Klan was a dangerous institution. Its only salvation lay in the absolute obedience of its members to the orders of an intelligent and patriotic chief. Unless the word of that chief remained the sole law of its life, a reign of terror by irresponsible fools would follow at once. As commander of the Klan in his county he must subdue this lawless element. It must be done with an iron hand and done immediately or it would be too late. His decision to act was instantaneous.
He sent a message to his wife that he couldn't get home for supper, locked his door and in three hours finished his day's work. There was ample time to head these boys off before they reached old Peeler's house. They couldn't start before eleven, yet he would take no chances. He determined to arrive an hour ahead of them.
The night was gloriously beautiful – a clear star-gemmed sky in the full tide of a Southern summer, the first week in August. He paused inside the gate of his home and drank for a moment the perfume of the roses on the lawn. The light from the window of his wife's room poured a mellow flood of welcome through the shadows beside the white, fluted columns. This home of his father's was all the wreck of war had left him and his heart gave a throb of joy to-night that it was his.
Behind the room where the delicate wife lay, a petted invalid, was the nursery. His baby boy was there, nestling in the arms of the black mammy who had nursed him twenty odd years ago. He could hear the soft crooning of her dear old voice singing the child to sleep. The heart of the young father swelled with pride. He loved his frail little wife with a deep, tender passion, but this big rosy-cheeked, laughing boy, which she had given him six months ago, he fairly worshipped.
He stopped again under the nursery window and listened to the music of the cradle. The old lullaby had waked a mocking bird in a magnolia beside the porch and he was answering her plaintive wail with a thrilling love song. By the strange law of contrast, his memory flashed over the fields of death he had trodden in the long war.
"What does it matter after all, these wars and revolutions, if God only brings with each new generation a nobler breed of men!"
He tipped softly past the window lest his footfall disturb the loved ones above, hurried to the stable, saddled his horse and slowly rode through the quiet streets of the town. On clearing the last clump of negro cabins on the outskirts his pace quickened to a gallop.
He stopped in the edge of the woods at the gate which opened from Peeler's farm on the main road. The boys would have to enter here. He would stop them at this spot.
The solemn beauty of the night stirred his soul to visions of the future, and the coming battle which his Klan must fight for the mastery of the state. The chirp of crickets, the song of katydids and the flash of fireflies became the martial music and the flaming torches of triumphant hosts he saw marching to certain victory. But the Klan he was leading was a wild horse that must be broken to the bit or both horse and rider would plunge to ruin.
There would be at least twenty or thirty of these young marauders to-night. If they should unite in defying his authority it would be a serious and dangerous situation. Somebody might be killed. And yet he waited without a fear of the outcome. He had faced odds before. He loved a battle when the enemy outnumbered him two to one. It stirred
