“I’m afraid not. I suppose he takes his wine, and probably something stronger sometimes; though he wants a cool head now. I wish those fellows over there wouldn’t drink so. I’m for breaking up the nigger militia; but we want cool heads for it. We can _scare_ the niggers out of it if we work it right, and all keep sober.” “That’s what I think, but you see already how it will be. I would go home and give it up, but they’ll say I was afraid. I don’t want to get into no collisions with the United States, for my part; and if a lot of them get drunk, I’m afraid something will be done that will lead to that.” Less than half a mile from where this conversation was passing, Harry Gaston sat in his shady porch. “Don’t set there doing nothing but watching,” said a tall lean young woman who sat just inside of the door, busying herself by rocking in an easy chair. “The General will think yo’ reckon on ’im awfully, an’ he’s conceited enough now, mercy knows! There, take them old papers of yo’re uncle’s, and make as if yo’ was studying politics on yo’ own hook;” and she tossed a handful of newspapers upon the floor beside him. He took up a copy of that celebrated democratic organ of the South, the Charleston _News and Courier_, dated May, 1875, and read— “Governor Chamberlain richly deserves the confidence of the people of this State. The people of South Carolina, who have all at stake, who see and hear what persons outside the State cannot know, are satisfied with his honesty. They believe in him as well they may.” “Bah! the contemptible carpet-bagger!” said Gaston, dashing the paper on the floor; and picking up another, dated February, 1876, he read again— “We believe that, without regard to consequences or to his party, he (the Governor) will go on in the narrow path of right.” Another—“January, 1876. In South Carolina the conspicuous leader in the fight for reform, the one man who has made reform possible at an early day, is Governor Chamberlain, whose election was the greatest blessing in disguise that this people has ever known.” “The greatest curse!” exclaimed Gaston kicking the paper off the porch. “That the _Courier_?” drawled Mrs. Gaston. “I thought that used to be the best paper in the South—true to the Confederacy all through the war. Has it gone over to the Radicals?” “It don’t pretend so, but it has been bribed, I reckon.” A voice from the highway, now called the husband away to hold a brief colloquy with General Baker. “My horse is very tired and warm, and I myself am in need of refreshment; so, Mr. Gaston, I shall be obliged if you will strike across the fields and notify your father-in-law of my arrival, and bring him and your brother-in-law, Tom, to the store of Mr. Dunn to meet me for conference about the suit we have in hand,” and the great man drove on. “Mary, General Baker wants me to go across the fields to your father’s for him,” said the young man, with a demure countenance, on re-entering the house.