artificial banks. Having the organ of comparison well developed among the
other faculties, the brain of the statesman took in the situation at once;
for, observing with what success doors and windows were swept from their
moorings at the heads of the retreating columns, he saw the twenty or more
ghostly embodiments that occupied his rear in imagination only, and,
hesitating for one instant, he joined the assault on the "imminent
breach," ballasting his flight with cries that bore a marvellous
resemblance to the changes of which the last word of the "befogoin" is
susceptible. Reaching a neighboring window at the end of two vigorous
jumps, he passed out into the night--a distance of "eighteen foot in the
clur," as he afterwards testified--and regaining his feet and the top of
his bent simultaneously, "the startled ear of outer darkness" heard
something like the report "murder," at brief intervals of time
accommodated to long intervals of space, for about the period employed by
an Erie express train in exhausting a winter horizon.]

CHAPTER XI.

EFFECTS PRODUCED. A PERIOD OF ALARM.

Excitement throughout the State--Scenes at the Capitol--Metropolitan
Arrests resisted--Secret Police--Government Officials Notified of the
Extent of the Disaster--A Quorum of the Legislative or Judicial
Bodies not Attainable--No Departures from the City--The K. K. K.
Cabal Receiving that Attention from Caucusing Legislators which its
Importance Demanded--What the State Judiciary Demanded--A Mob at the
State-House--At Sunset the Situation Unchanged--A Sortie from the
Capitol--Mobs along the Route--Seeking Refuge from the Excited
Populace--Out of Danger--The New Situation--Governor Brownlow
Escaping from the Temporary Fortress by an Alley-way--An Ugly
Specimen of the Genus Ku-Klux--The Governor Recovers from the
Attitude of a Suppliant--An Amusing Episode--"But how many suns, O
Man, would look upon the Deed Unavenged?"--A Canard which Grew out of
this Affair.

On the day following the grand _coup de main_ of the Klan to which we have
directed attention in the previous chapters, and which, in bringing
depression to League affairs, sent the former's mercury to a feverish
height, great excitement prevailed throughout the State; and at the
business centres, and more especially the capital, something like a
popular demonstration greeted the arrival of news from provincial