In less than ten minutes the throngs, who had assembled with no more serious object in view than to gratify an idle curiosity, and express their unfriendliness to their taskmasters by the methods usually adopted, had been taken up by the absorbent elements of the crowd flowing newsward, and were no more. If the Governor's party had expected resistance of this character, they were to be deceived, for by the time the lamps were lighted, almost a calm pervaded that quarter; and when, a few moments later, the first of the party (who proved to be Governor Brownlow) left the building by a postern-gate in the rear, he was seen by none but the spies who had been set to watch. Hurrying along an alleyway, the honorable refugee had crossed two squares ere he emerged upon the broad street which led across an unfrequented portion of the city, to the vicinity of the mansion which he occupied. Halting here to reconnoitre and indulge a moment of quiet reflection, after the exciting events through which he had passed, he was suddenly encountered by a form of the peril from which he was seeking to escape that had more than once been suggested to his fancy, but which now presented itself in such palpable outline, and with an attitude so positively menacing, that his courage forsook him for the moment, and he recovered from the manner of a suppliant just in time to save himself from a very humiliating scene. The _thing_ in question was an ugly and even frightful embodiment of the genus Ku-Klux, which, having been successful in its contemplated surprise, was very naturally disposed to dictate terms to its victim. As no violence was intended, it had time, however, for but a few tragic sentences, adopted from a repertory prepared for the occasion, before the frightened official had recovered his wits and his Greek. Raising himself to his full stature, the Governor denied the assumed ghostliness of his interlocutor in these precise words: "Do you not know, fiend, that I possess the authority to have you shot or hung, and that I am strongly persuaded to exercise it?" To which the "fiend" retorted in the following laconism "But how many suns, O man! would look upon the deed unavenged?" and realizing that they were quits, the parties to this amusing by-comedy went their respective ways. The report of this transaction reaching the public ear via the sensation-mongers, a few hours later, it was taken up in its amended form and bandied about the coffee houses and street-corner gatherings until it finally lost all proportions, and at nine o'clock, precisely, was guilty of sending an old gentleman to bed, on the outskirts of the city, under the conviction that Governor Brownlow had been murdered by the Ku-Klux.