“Down at the ‘dead-ring,’” said Harris, who then gave the account the reader has had, and continued, “When I stepped into my house I stepped right onto some of my wife’s clothes. They had taken ’em all out of the bureau, and flung ’em all over the floor, broke open three large trunks I had, and taken away every rag of clothing I had, and my wife’s bran new dress that she had made very fancy to be baptized in next month—had never had it on—they taken that away, and her watch and chain, and all her jewelry, and all my clothes; and taken a pin of mine that didn’t cost me but sixty-five dollars; and I don’t suppose some of them fellers ever had sixty-five dollars in their lives; and I told Pick. Baker so this morning. Just so; and he said it was some of the factory crowd from the city, none o’ his men hadn’t done it. I said I don’t know; I seen some of his men looked pretty bad too, and I thought they’d take things just as quick as anybody. “He says, ‘Well, there’s bad men in all crowds.’ Everything in my house is broken up. They carried off all my lamps and such things, tore down my curtains, broke my dishes, and carried off what they couldn’t break—all the victuals and everything. When I told Gaston so this morning, he offered me twenty-five cents to get me something to eat, and I told him I thanked him. They just walked right over my wife’s clothes, and spit on ’em.” “Harris, what do you suppose they did all this for?” “Well, they said before it happened that I would see the white people intended to carry the state democratic, and I expect this is to intimidate us. Hanson Baker told me last night, (or this morning it was) when I was going home after they done killed the men that was lying there; and I asked them how they intended to carry the State Democratic, and they said, ‘You see there? Well, that’s the way we’ll lay you just so, if ever you vote the Republican ticket again;’ and I said, ‘If that’s the way you’re going on, I an’t a going to vote nohow. I’m done voting,’ and they said, ‘You’d better be done voting, unless you vote the Democratic ticket.” The whole company accepted this view of the motives of the rioters. “They didn’t disturb you, Springer?” asked Uncle Jesse. “You didn’t finish.”