et provided at the
end of the car for people of his class. He was therefore given an
opportunity to reflect, during a walk along the ties, upon his true
relation to society. Another stop was made for a gentleman who had
sent a Negro boy ahead to flag the train and notify the conductor that
he would be along in fifteen or twenty minutes with a couple of lady
passengers. A hot journal caused a further delay. These interruptions
made it eleven o'clock, a three-hours' run, before the train reached
Carthage.

The town was much smaller than Clarendon. It comprised a public square
of several acres in extent, on one side of which was the railroad
station, and on another the court house. One of the remaining sides
was occupied by a row of shops; the fourth straggled off in various
directions. The whole wore a neglected air. Bales of cotton goods were
piled on the platform, apparently just unloaded from wagons standing
near. Several white men and Negroes stood around and stared listlessly
at the train and the few who alighted from it.

Inquiring its whereabouts from one of the bystanders, the colonel
found the nearest hotel--a two-story frame structure, with a piazza
across the front, extending to the street line. There was a buggy
standing in front, its horse hitched to one of the piazza posts. Steps
led up from the street, but one might step from the buggy to the floor
of the piazza, which was without a railing.

The colonel mounted the steps and passed through the door into a small
room, which he took for the hotel office, since there were chairs
standing against the walls, and at one side a table on which a
register lay open. The only person in the room, beside himself, was a
young man seated near the door, with his feet elevated to the back of
another chair, reading a newspaper from which he did not look up.

The colonel, who wished to make some inquiries and to register for the
dinner which he might return to take, looked around him for the clerk,
or some one in authority, but no one was visible. While waiting, he
walked over to the desk and turned over the leaves of the dog-eared
register. He recognised only one name--that of Mr. William Fetters,
who had registered there only a day or two before.

No one had yet appeared. The young man in the chair was evidently not
connected with the establishment. His expression was so forbidding,
not to say arrogant, and his absorption in the newspaper so complete,
that the colone