iolent
emotions surging a moment before.

Belton turned his head slowly, letting his eye sweep the entire circle
of faces before him, and there seemed to be a force and an influence
emanating from the look. He began: "I call upon you all to bear me
witness that I have ever in word and deed been zealous in the work of
building up this Imperium, whose holy mission it is to grapple with
our enemy and wrest from him our stolen rights, given to us by nature
and nature's God. If there be one of you that knowest aught against
my patriotism, I challenge him to declare it now; and if there be
anything to even cast a suspicion upon me, I shall gladly court a
traitor's ignoble doom."

He paused here. No one accepted the challenge, for Belton was the
acknowledged guiding star that had led the Imperium to the high point
of efficiency where Bernard found it.

"By your silence," Belton continued, "I judge that my patriotism is
above suspicion; and this question being settled, I shall feel free
to speak all that is within me on the subject now before me. I have a
word to say in defence of the south--"

"No! No! No! No!" burst from a score of throats. Friends crowded
around Belton and begged him to desist. They told him that the current
was so strong that it was death to all future usefulness to try to
breast it.

Belton waved them away and cried out in impassioned tones: "On her
soil I was born; on her bosom I was reared; into her arms I hope
to fall in death; and I shall not from fear of losing popular favor
desist from pointing out the natural sources from which her sins
arise, so that when judgment is pronounced justice will not hesitate
to stamp it with her righteous seal."

"Remember your scars!" shouted one.

"Yes, I am scarred," returned Belton. "I have been in the hands of
an angry mob; I have dangled from a tree at the end of a rope; I have
felt the murderous pistol drive cold lead into my flesh; I have been
accounted dead and placed upon the dissecting table; I have felt the
sharp surgical knife ripping my flesh apart when I was supposed to be
dead; all of these hardships and more besides I have received at the
hands of the South; but she has not and cannot drive truth from my
bosom, and the truth shall I declare this day."

Seeing that it was useless to attempt to deter him, Belton continued
his speech without interruption: "There are many things in the message
of our most worthy President that demand attention. I