hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now
only pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change,
and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around toward
other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these
people were relieved to have it take that direction.

The painful thing observable about all this business was the
alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their
cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common
oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel
between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural
and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste
to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever
stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This
man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his
work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against
them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable
as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything
horrible about it.

This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in his
head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when
the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and
frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed
their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their
midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords
in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of
slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out
their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very
institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming
feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was,
that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did
feel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface,
but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out,
under favoring circumstances, was something--in fact, it was enough;
for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it
doesn't show on the outside.

Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of
the Southern "poor white" of the far future. The king presently
showed impatience, and said:

"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye
the criminals will abide in their father's house?