The youngster’s eyes flashed, and his face was pale with rage. What! _he_ to be called a _boy_ by a “nigger?” He looked down upon the diminutive black figure beside him, in whose hands was one of Remington’s best rifles, and that alone restrained him from laying the long lash of his driving-whip close about the “black biped,” as he mentally called him. He did venture to retort with some asperity. The altercation was brief, but heated, and soon the whip was cracked decidedly closer to Pipsie’s left ear than was comfortable to its owner. “Yo’ jes be little mo’ ca’ful, yo’ young man!” said Pipsie, rubbing the ear briskly. “Yo’ not got no runaway niggah slave heah now. I’se a free man, an’ got as much rights as yo’, an’ mo’n dat, too, I’se got a United States gun heah, an’ I knows how to shoot, too. Yo’ needn’t ’sult no National Guards fo’ nuffin’. Ef yo’ ha’n’t got no mo’ yo’ want say t’ me, yo’ bes’ jes’ git ’long ’bout yo’ business, or yo’ may git hurt!” and he made a feint to raise the empty gun to his eye, when young Tom Baker rode away in great haste. Baconsville had never witnessed such a “celebration” as it enjoyed the next day, which came bright and beautiful. Though usually tardy in morning rising—possibly from dread of the malaria, which the sun dissipates by nine o’clock, on this memorable day, the inhabitants of the village were astir at an early hour, for, through the heavy fog which crept up from the river, and shrouded the whole valley, the red-haired and fair-skinned Marmor, and the largest, strongest, and blackest citizen, with a few followers, were dimly visible, dragging a blacksmith’s anvil along the principal streets. They paused frequently in front of the residences and shops of the chief citizens to salute them by an explosion of gunpowder upon the anvil—the nearest approach to a cannonade possible in the impecuneous little city. But not earlier than four o’clock in the afternoon was the excitement at its height. At that time the brass band was playing national airs under a great oak tree on a vacant plot of ground on which a platform had been erected; and a few seats placed in front of it for the accommodation of the gentler sex were rapidly filling; for, at a safe distance, thirteen explosions upon the anvil, in commemoration of the thirteen original colonies, were being followed by thirty-seven, in honor of the then existing States of the Union. These were the recognized signals for the commencement of the most important exercises of the day; and the militia having formed at the armory, marched to the rostrum, bearing the “Stars and Stripes,” and were disposed on either side of the speaker’s stand, while other free and patriotic citizens stood in compact groups near and about the well-filled seats.