F the audience was surprised at what next happened, what may be said of the astounded candidate when he saw the powerful form of Mrs. Parsons rise from her seat near him and calmly stride with the tread of an angry man to the speaker's stand and take off her curtained bonnet and begin to wave it up and down to indicate that she wanted them to keep their places? “I never made a speech in my life,” she gulped--“that is, not outside of an experience meetin'. But, people, ef this ain't an experience meeting I never went to one. Ef the Lord God had told me Hisse'f in a blazonin' voice from heaven that any human bein' could take such a swivelled-up, contemptible shape as the man that's yelled at you like a sick calf to-day, I never would have believed it. I've got a right to be heard. I couldn't set still. It would give me St. Vitus's dance to try it ten minutes longer. I've got a right to talk, because, friends and neighbors, this contemptible creature has, in a roundabout way, accused _me_ of law-breaking, an'--” “Why, madam!” Wiggin gasped, as he half rose and stared around in utter bewilderment. “I don't even _know_ you! I never laid eyes on you before this minute--” “Well, take a good look at me now!” Mrs. Parsons hurled at him, “for I'm the woman that helped Pete Warren git away from the sheriff, when your sort were after the poor, silly nigger to lynch him for a crime he had nothin' to do with. If you are right in all your empty tirade this morning, I'm a woman unfit for the community I live in, and if I have to share that honor with a man of your stamp, I'll lynch myself on the first tree I come to.” She turned from the astounded, suddenly crestfallen speaker to the open-mouthed audience. “Listen to me, men, women, and children!” she thundered, in a voice that was as steady and clear in resonance as a bell. “If there was ever a crafty, spider-like politician on earth you have listened to him spout to-day. He's picked out the one big sore-spot in your kind natures and he's punched it, and jabbed it, and lacerated it with every sort of thorn he could stick into it, till he gained his aim in makin' you one and all so blind with rage at the black race that you are about to overlook the good in yore own. “There are two sides to this matter, and you would be pore excuses for men if you jest looked at one side of it. Carson Dwight is the other candidate, and I don't know but one thing agin his character, and that is that he ever allowed his name to be put up along with this man's. It's a funny sort of race, anyway--run by a greyhound and a jack-rabbit.” A ripple of amusement passed over many faces, and there were several open laughs over Wiggin's evident discomfiture. He started to rise, but voices from all parts of the gathering cried out: “Sit down, Wiggin! Sit down, it ain't yore time!”