The discovery of the Captain of the African Guards lying in his full uniform in Lynch’s yard send 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 armoury under arms day and night. Beneath his door he had found a notice which was also nailed on the courthouse. 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.

”Dreadful Era, Black Epoch,

“Hideous Hour.

“General Order No. I.

“The Negro Militia now organized in this State threatens the extinction of civilization. They have avowed their purpose to make war upon and exterminate the Ku Klux Klan, an organization 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 328 their arms at the courthouse 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 courthouse door, could have come only from their brain. They are the hereditary leaders of these people. They alone would have the audacity to fling this crime into the teeth of the world and threaten worse. We are face to face with Southern barbarism. 329 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 organized virtue of the community, or its organized 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——” 330

“I’ll take the responsibility!” growled the old cynic.

“Don’t ask me to share it,” said the younger man emphatically.

The father winced, his lips trembled, and he answered brokenly:

“My boy, this is the bitterest hour of my life that has had little to make it sweet. To hear such words from you is more than I can bear. I am an old man now—my sands are nearly run. But two human beings love me, and I love but two. On you and your sister I have lavished all the treasures of a maimed and strangled soul—and it has come to this! Read the notice which one of your friends thrust into the window of my bedroom last night.”

He handed Phil a piece of paper on which was written:

“The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal union League, will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid this community of his presence.

“K. K. K.”

“Are you an officer of the union League?” Phil asked in surprise.

“I am its soul.”

“How could a Southerner discover this, if your own children didn’t know it?”

“By their spies who have joined the League.”

“And do the rank and file know the Black Pope at the head of the order?”

“No, but high officials do.” 331

“Does Lynch?”

“Certainly.”

“Then he is the scoundrel who placed that note in your room. It is a clumsy attempt to forge an order of the Klan. The white man does not live in this town capable of that act. I know these people.”

“My boy, you are bewitched by the smiles of a woman to deny your own flesh and blood.”

“Nonsense, father—you are possessed by an idea which has become an insane mania——”

“Will you respect my wishes?” the old man broke in angrily.

“I will not,” was the clear answer. Phil turned and left the room, and the old man’s massive head sank on his breast in helpless baffled rage and grief.

He was more successful in his appeal to Elsie. He convinced her of the genuineness of the threat against him. The brutal reference to his lameness roused the girl’s soul. When the old man, crushed by Phil’s desertion, broke down the last reserve of his strange cold nature, tore his wounded heart open to her, cried in agony over his deformity, his lameness, and the anguish with which he saw the threatened ruin of his life-work, she threw her arms around his neck in a flood of tears and cried:

“Hush, father, I will not desert you. I ............