I'm a Southerner, and I honor the old
aristocracy you represent. I'm going to join with you to crush this
Yankee and put the niggers in their places. They are getting impudent
around here; they need a lesson and, by gad! they'll get one they'll
remember."
"Now, see here, Colton,--nothing rash," the Colonel charged him,
warningly. "Don't stir up needless trouble; but--well, things must
change."
Colton rose and shook his head.
"The niggers need a lesson," he muttered as he unsteadily bade his host
good-bye. Cresswell watched him uncomfortably as he rode away, and
again a feeling of doubt stirred within him. What new force was he
loosening against his black folk--his own black folk, who had lived
about him and his fathers nigh three hundred years? He saw the huge form
of the sheriff loom like an evil spirit a moment on the rise of the road
and sink into the night. He turned slowly to his cheerless house
shuddering as he entered the uninviting portals.
_Thirty-seven_
THE MOB
When Emma, Bertie's child, came home after a two years' course of study,
she had passed from girlhood to young womanhood. She was white, and
sandy-haired. She was not beautiful, and she appeared to be fragile; but
she also looked sweet and good, with that peculiar innocence which peers
out upon the world with calm, round eyes and sees no evil, but does
methodically its simple, everyday work.
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