The widow of a Ku Klux captain tells me that one night, when her husband was absent on duty in a town where whites were in terror because the negroes were threatening to burn it, her own house was fired. She was in bed, her new-born baby at her side; stealthy steps were heard under her window. Her old black mauma was afraid to go to the window and look out. There was a smell of fire; the mauma ran to the door and shrieked alarm. A shout answered from the cellar, where a faithful negro man-servant was putting out flames. He had let the incendiaries go away thinking their purpose fulfilled. The returning husband, sorely perplexed, said: "I do not see how I can do my duty by my family and the public. I must give up my Klan." "No," she answered. "All have to take turns in leaving their own unprotected. I let you go into the army. Some one must lead, and your men will not follow and obey any one else as they will you." He had been their captain in the Confederate Army. To a Loyal League jury or magistrate a prisoner on trial had but to give the League signal to secure acquittal. A convicted and sentenced criminal would be pardoned by a Loyal League Governor. Klans took administration of justice into their own hands because courts were ineffective. In a den, regularly established and conducted, a man would be tried by due process before judge and jury, with counsel appointed for defense; evidence would be taken, the case would be argued; the jury would render verdict; the judge would dismiss the case or pronounce sentence. The man on trial might or might not be present. A Ku Klux captain tells me that great effort was made to give fair trials; acquittals were more frequent than convictions. But when the court imposed sentence, sentence was carried out. In the hill country of South Carolina, a one-armed ex-Confederate, a "poor white," made a scanty living for his large family by hauling. Once, on a lonely road when his load was whiskey, he was surrounded by negro soldiers, who killed him, took possession of the whiskey and drank it. Ring-leaders were arrested and lodged in jail; some were spirited away to Columbia and released; a plan was afoot to free the rest, among them the negro captain who had boasted of his crime, and flouted the whites with their powerlessness to punish him. The prison was surrounded one night by silent, black-robed horsemen on black-draped horses moving without sound; jailer and guards were overpowered; cells entered; prisoners tried--if proceedings interrupted by confessions and cries for mercy can be called trial. Sentences were pronounced. The black-robed, black-masked circle chanted "Dies Iræ, Dies Illa." The town awoke from a night of seeming peace and silence to behold dead bodies swinging from the trees.[20]