The mongrel convention, which would have been run out of any Northern State in twenty-four hours, had provided for an election to be held in April, 1868, for the ratification or rejection of the new constitution that had been framed, and for the election of Governor and members of the General Assembly. Beginning on the 20th, the election was to continue for three days, a provision that was intended to enable the negroes to vote at as many precincts as they could conveniently reach in eighty-three hours. No safeguard whatever was thrown around the ballot-box, and it was the remembrance of this initial and overwhelming combination of fraud and corruption that induced the whites, at a later day, to stuff the ballot-boxes and suppress the votes of the ignorant. These things, with the hundreds of irritating incidents and episodes belonging to the unprecedented conditions, gradually worked up the feelings of the whites to a very high pitch of exasperation. The worst fears of the most timid bade fair to be realised, for the negroes, certain of their political supremacy, sure of the sympathy and support of Congress and the War Department, and filled with the conceit produced by the flattery and cajolery of the carpet-bag sycophants, were beginning to assume an attitude which would have been threatening and offensive if their skins had been white as snow. Gabriel was now old enough to appreciate the situation as it existed, though he never could bring himself to believe that there were elements of danger in it. He knew the negroes too well; he was too familiar with their habits of thought, and with their various methods of accomplishing a desired end. But he was familiar with the apprehensions of the community, and made no effort to put forward his own views, except in occasional conversations with Meriwether Clopton. After a time, however, it became clear, even to Gabriel, that something must be done to convince the misguided negroes that the whites were not asleep. He conformed himself to all the new conditions with the ready versatility of youth. He studied hard both night and day, but he spent the greater part of his time in the open air. It was perhaps fortunate for him at this time that there was a lack of formality in his methods of acquiring knowledge. He had no tutor, but his line of study was mapped out for him by Meriwether Clopton, who was astonished at the growing appetite of the lad for knowledge--an appetite that seemed to be insatiable. What he most desired to know, however, he made no inquiries about. He ached, as Mrs. Absalom would have said, to know why he had suddenly come to be afraid of Nan Dorrington. He had been somewhat shy of her before, but now, in these latter days, he was absolutely afraid of her. He liked her as well as ever, but somehow he became panic-stricken whenever he found himself in her company, which was not often.