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Book IV--The Ku Klux Klan

CHAPTER I

THE HUNT FOR THE ANIMAL

Aunt Cindy came at seven o'clock to get breakfast, and finding the house
closed and no one at home, supposed Mrs. Lenoir and Marion had remained at
the Cameron House for the night. She sat down on the steps, waited
grumblingly an hour, and then hurried to the hotel to scold her former
mistress for keeping her out so long.

Accustomed to enter familiarly, she thrust her head into the dining-room,
where the family were at breakfast with a solitary guest, muttering the
speech she had been rehearsing on the way:

"I lak ter know what sort er way dis--whar's Miss Jeannie?"

Ben leaped to his feet.

"Isn't she at home?"

"Been waitin' dar two hours."

"Great God!" he groaned, springing through the door and rushing to saddle
the mare. As he left he called to his father: "Let no one know till I
return."

At the house he could find no trace of the crime he had suspected. Every
room was in perfect order. He searched the yard carefully and under the
cedar by the window he saw the barefoot tracks of a negro. The white man
was never born who could make that track. The enormous heel projected
backward, and in the hollow of the instep where the dirt would scarcely be
touched by an Aryan was the deep wide mark of the African's flat foot. He
carefully measured it, brought from an outhouse a box, and fastened it
over the spot.

It might have been an ordinary chicken thief, of course. He could not
tell, but it was a fact of big import. A sudden hope flashed through his
mind that they might have risen with the sun and strolled to their
favourite haunt at Lover's Leap.

In two minutes he was there, gazing with hard-set eyes at Marion's hat and
handkerchief lying on the shelving rock.

The mare bent her glistening neck, touched the hat with her nose, lifted
her head, dilated her delicate nostrils, looked out over the cliff with
her great soft half-human eyes and whinnied gently.

Ben leaped to the ground, picked up the handkerchief, and looked at the
initials, "M. L.," worked in the corner. He knew what lay on the river's
brink below as well as if he stood over the dead bodies. He kissed the
letters of her name, crushed the handkerchief in his locked hands, and
cried:

"Now, Lord God, give me strength for the service of my people!"

He hurriedly examined the ground, amazed to find no trac