in droves, carrying
their muskets in their hands. Less than a dozen white men were to be seen
about the place.

The negroes, under the drill of the League and the Freedman's Bureau,
protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves,
disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new constitution, and elect a
legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House,
chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the
voters outside the booth as well as inside. He appeared to be omnipresent,
and his self-importance was a sight Phil had never dreamed. He could not
keep his eyes off him.

"By George, Cameron, he's a wonder!" he laughed.

Aleck had suppressed as far as possible the story of the painted stakes
and the deed, after sending out warnings to the brethren to beware of two
enticing strangers. The surveyors had reaped a rich harvest and passed on.
Aleck made up his mind to go to Columbia, make the laws himself, and never
again trust a white man from the North or South. The agent of the
Freedman's Bureau at Piedmont tried to choke him off the ticket. The
League backed him to a man. He could neither read nor write, but before he
took to whiskey he had made a specialty of revival exhortation, and his
mouth was the most effective thing about him. In this campaign he was an
orator of no mean powers. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what his
people wanted, and he put the thing in words so plain that a wayfaring
man, though a fool, couldn't make any mistake about it.

As he bustled past, forming a battalion of his brethren in line to march
to the polls, Phil followed his every movement with amused interest.

Besides being so bow-legged that his walk was a moving joke he was so
striking a negro in his personal appearance, he seemed to the young
Northerner almost a distinct type of man.

His head was small and seemed mashed on the sides until it bulged into a
double lobe behind. Even his ears, which he had pierced and hung with red
earbobs, seemed to have been crushed flat to the side of his head. His
kinked hair was wrapped in little hard rolls close to the skull and bound
tightly with dirty thread. His receding forehead was high and indicated a
cunning intelligence. His nose was broad and crushed flat against his
face. His jaws were strong and angular, mouth wide, and lips thick,
curling back from rows of solid teeth set obliquely in their blue gums.
The one perfect thing a