lude both
froth and sediment, the top and bottom of so many human lives.

After having devoted much thought to this subject, and made many empirical
journeys along the route which leads to men's confidences, without being
suspected of any such deep-laid treason as that which we here confess in
the light of a laudable undertaking, it is our candid opinion that if the
unsuperstitious of earth were doomed to fall by the knife of some avenging
Elijah, the bodies of the slain would no more constitute a Waterloo than
fifty swallows would make a tolerable month of July. So that when we say
this Ku-Klux breeze blew consternation to many timid hearts, both young
and old, great and small, in Crow Hide, we only state in a small way what
might have been true, under slightly amended conditions, of the best
educated of the _oi polloi_ of the largest cities of the greatest
republics.

CHAPTER V.

K. K. K. DEALINGS WITH THE LOYAL LEAGUE.

A Train which brought Welcome Passengers--Caucusing in the Open Air a
Dangerous Proceeding--Correct Surmises--An Old Church, Bequeathed
from Generation to Generation, and Liable to many Uses--Brothers and
Sisters all--The L. L. in full Bloom--Storm succeeded by a
Calm--Weird Visitors--What they left behind them--Dummy Constructed
of Cow-bones, and Habited in full Ku-Klux Regalia--Height, Ten
Feet--Sudden Panic--The Rally--Still in Doubt--The Chairman's
Stratagem--How it didn't Work--Despondent Leaguers taught to Act for
Themselves--Finale.

On the day preceding the evening to which the fates referred the K. K. K.
demonstration, as aforesaid, a crowd of sable politicians might have been
seen lounging in the neighborhood of the village depot; and a few moments
later, as the train drew up, edging their way through the crowd to the
vicinity of two small dark objects, which, though partially concealed by
the crowd, undoubtedly constituted a part of it, as they were seen to wave
above the heads of the tallest what could hardly have been mistaken for
anything less startlingly suggestive than two glazed carpet-bags.

When the tumult subsided, and the crowd, after hovering for an instant in
the neighborhood of this pantomime, melted away as depot assemblages are
wont to do, it was plainly to be seen that the sable electors had been in
search of the two men with the glazed carpet-bags, and the two men with
the glazed carpet-bags in search of the sable e