,
and saw her ride out of the gate, with the exquisite lines of her little
figure melting into the graceful lines of the mare's glistening form, he
exclaimed:

"I declare, I don't know which is the prettier, Marion or Queen!"

"I know," was the mother's soft answer.

"They are both thoroughbreds," said Ben, watching them admiringly.

"Wait till you see her to-night in her first ball dress," whispered Mrs.
Lenoir.

At noon Ben and Phil strolled to the polling-place to watch the progress
of the first election under negro rule. The Square was jammed with
shouting, jostling, perspiring negroes, men, women, and children. The day
was warm, and the African odour was supreme even in the open air.

A crowd of two hundred were packed around a peddler's box. There were two
of them--one crying the wares, and the other wrapping and delivering the
goods. They were selling a new patent poison for rats.

"I've only a few more bottles left now, gentlemen," he shouted, "and the
polls will close at sundown. A great day for our brother in black. Two
years of army rations from the Freedman's Bureau, with old army clothes
thrown in, and now the ballot--the priceless glory of American
citizenship. But better still the very land is to be taken from these
proud aristocrats and given to the poor down-trodden black man. Forty
acres and a mule--think of it! Provided, mind you--that you have a bottle
of my wonder-worker to kill the rats and save your corn for the mule. No
man can have the mule unless he has corn; and no man can have corn if he
has rats--and only a few bottles left----"

"Gimme one," yelled a negro.

"Forty acres and a mule, your old masters to work your land and pay his
rent in corn, while you sit back in the shade and see him sweat."

"Gimme er bottle and two er dem pictures!" bawled another candidate for a
mule.

The peddler handed him the bottle and the pictures and threw a handful of
his labels among the crowd. These labels happened to be just the size of
the ballots, having on them the picture of a dead rat lying on his back,
and above, the emblem of death, the crossbones and skull.

"Forty acres and a mule for every black man--why was I ever born white? I
never had no luck, nohow!"

Phil and Ben passed on nearer the polling-place, around which stood a
cordon of soldiers with a line of negro voters two hundred yards in length
extending back into the crowd.

The negro Leagues came in armed battalions and voted