anger. The negro churches have pledged themselves to expel him from their
membership. What more do you want?"

"There's another side to it," protested the Captain. "Since the League has
taken in the negroes, every Union white man has dropped it like a hot
iron, except the lone scallawag or carpet-bagger who expects an office. In
the church, the social circle, in business or pleasure, these men are
lepers. How can a human being stand it? I've tried to grind this hellish
spirit in the dirt under my heel, and unless you can do it they'll beat
you in the long run! You've got to have some Southern white men or you're
lost."

"I'll risk it with a hundred thousand negro majority," said Howle with a
sneer. "The fun will just begin then. In the meantime, I'll have you ease
up on this county's government. I've brought that man back who knocked you
down. Let him alone. I've pardoned him. The less said about this affair,
the better."

* * * * *

As the day of the election under the new regime of Reconstruction drew
near, the negroes were excited by rumours of the coming great events.
Every man was to receive forty acres of land for his vote, and the
enthusiastic speakers and teachers had made the dream a resistless one by
declaring that the Government would throw in a mule with the forty acres.
Some who had hesitated about the forty acres of land, remembering that it
must be worked, couldn't resist the idea of owning a mule.

The Freedman's Bureau reaped a harvest in $2 marriage fees from negroes
who were urged thus to make their children heirs of landed estates stocked
with mules.

Every stranger who appeared in the village was regarded with awe as a
possible surveyor sent from Washington to run the lines of these
forty-acre plots.

And in due time the surveyors appeared. Uncle Aleck, who now devoted his
entire time to organizing the League, and drinking whiskey which the dues
he collected made easy, was walking back to Piedmont from a League meeting
in the country, dreaming of this promised land.

He lifted his eyes from the dusty way and saw before him two surveyors
with their arms full of line stakes painted red, white, and blue. They
were well-dressed Yankees--he could not be mistaken. Not a doubt disturbed
his mind. The kingdom of heaven was at hand!

He bowed low and cried:

"Praise de Lawd! De messengers is come! I'se waited long, but I sees 'em
now wid my own eyes!"