t one eye er his'n restin' on
me no longer 'n I kin he'p, an' I don' know how I'm gwine ter like dis
job ef he's gwine ter be comin' roun' here. He ain' nothin' but po'
w'ite trash nohow; but Lawd! Lawd! look at de money he's got,--livin'
at de hotel, wearin' di'mon's, an' colloguin' wid de bes' quality er dis
town! 'Pears ter me de bottom rail is gittin' mighty close ter de top.
Well, I s'pose it all comes f'm bein' w'ite. I wush ter Gawd I wuz
w'ite!"

After this fervent aspiration, having nothing else to do for the time
being, except to remain within call, and having caught a few words of
the conversation as he went in with the chairs, Jerry, who possessed a
certain amount of curiosity, placed close to the wall the broken stool
upon which he sat while waiting in the hall, and applied his ear to a
hole in the plastering of the hallway. There was a similar defect in the
inner wall, between the same two pieces of studding, and while this
inner opening was not exactly opposite the outer, Jerry was enabled,
through the two, to catch in a more or less fragmentary way what was
going on within.

He could hear the major, now and then, use the word "negro," and
McBane's deep voice was quite audible when he referred, it seemed to
Jerry with alarming frequency, to "the damned niggers," while the
general's suave tones now and then pronounced the word "niggro,"--a sort
of compromise between ethnology and the vernacular. That the gentlemen
were talking politics seemed quite likely, for gentlemen generally
talked politics when they met at the Chronicle office. Jerry could hear
the words "vote," "franchise," "eliminate," "constitution," and other
expressions which marked the general tenor of the talk, though he could
not follow it all,--partly because he could not hear everything
distinctly, and partly because of certain limitations which nature had
placed in the way of Jerry's understanding anything very difficult or
abstruse.

He had gathered enough, however, to realize, in a vague way, that
something serious was on foot, involving his own race, when a bell
sounded over his head, at which he sprang up hastily and entered the
room where the gentlemen were talking.

"Jerry," said the major, "wait on Captain McBane."

"Yas, suh," responded Jerry, turning toward the captain, whose eye he
carefully avoided meeting directly.

"Take that half a dollar, boy," ordered McBane, "an' go 'cross the
street to Mr. Sykes's, and tell him to