“Egh, Watta, don’t yos’ mind what Mann Harris said—tole that Hanson Baker, Tom’s brother, said a month ago that there’s gwoine to be the —— to pay in Baconsville pretty soon? Reckon the white folks is begun that p’ogramme he tole ’bout,” said another militia man. “He said fifteen hundred of ’em was ready to break us up, an’ of co’se Gasten’s one of ’em.” A volley of oaths and abusive epithets was rolling from Tommy Baker’s lips; which was indeed their most familiar utterance when addressing persons of color; and some members of the company began to return the charge in kind. “Attention, company!” shouted Capt. Doc. “It is going to rain, and we had best house our guns. We won’t hold any contention with these men. Now, yo’ hush up! I’ll settle this matter. Open order, and let them go through.” The command was obeyed, but not without murmurs of discontent, which, however, were soon quieted, as a slight shower descended, and they hastened off to the armory. Marmor, with his two little children, had been standing a few rods away, watching and praising the exercise. When the altercation occurred, being a Warden of the town, he sent John Carr, the Town Marshal, or Chief of Police, to ascertain its cause; but it was passed before his arrival at the scene. CHAPTER IV. LEGAL REDRESS. ‘O thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand Has oft been stretched to shield the honored land!’ SO trivial a quarrel as that narrated in the closing part of our last chapter, had it occurred elsewhere than in a community in which the inhabitants had so recently sustained the relations of masters and slaves, would scarcely have elicited remark upon a subsequent day; but over the three or four hundred colored, and forty or fifty white residents of Baconsville there settled a dark cloud of anxiety and apprehension of coming evil. Angry looks and threats of violence on the part of the whites were recalled and anxiously discussed by the colored people, as were also the recent and frequently expressed determination to “carry the next election for the Democratic Party, if even through blood waist deep,” though the colored voters were largely in the majority, and almost without exception, if unintimidated, voted the Republican ticket. These, with the oft-repeated boast that the illegal Rifle Clubs, trained cavalry companies, were ready to co-operate for the suppression and utter dispersion of this colored company of State militia, with the fact that similar acts of violence were by no means new experiences to the ex-slaves in the South, but were even then being perpetrated in the surrounding country, made the outlook for the colored population gloomy, indeed. On the other hand, the officers of the town, with the single exception of our friend Marmor, were all of the colored race, and as he was a Republican native, he was even more repugnant to his white neighbors than a “nigger.”