“That’s so,” added Marmor, and Doc, and Watta, who now joined the group; and they hastily accompanied him down to the Rail Road platform nearly opposite the armory, and urged him to flee, as one who would be first attacked. Rapidly crossing the river, upon the Rail Road bridge, the train, which arrived, in ten minutes took him homewards; too soon for the accomplishment of his purpose to learn Gen. Baker’s mission to the city. Never were the combative characteristics of the whites and colored races in the Southern States more clearly exhibited than in the scenes at Baconsville that day, though leading colored men, whose exceptional energy, and perhaps assertion, had made them such, were necessarily prominent. Not bravery, so much as skill in its exercise, constitutes the white man a leader among his fellows. In general terms it may be said that timidity, with extremely rare acts of rashness, characterizes the colored race, bravado and arbitrary assumption, of the white and both are the victims of mutual suspicion and distrust, which often _cause_ the dreaded ill. Gen. Baker was absent half an hour, and on his return a general remounting took place, while over the hill at the back of the village, came a large company of horsemen, all well armed. Down Main street they rode, two abreast, and were at once distributed throughout the town; a squad upon each street corner, attended by an equal number of infantry; all with weapons in hand ready for immediate action. Look which way they would, the distracted freedmen saw armed men, and re-enforcements constantly arriving from all directions. Darkness was approaching, and though the hills around were still touched by the glow of the setting sun, its refracted rays seemed to exaggerate the squalor, and magnify the deformities of the little town in the valley; and, exalting the warlike preparations, to clothe them with every imaginable horror; while the humidity of the evening air intensified the sounds of blood-thirsty riot. Justice Marmor now closed and locked his office door, and began at this tardy moment, to think of adopting Mrs. M’s advice. Stepping out of his own back door, he leaped the fence into his neighbor’s yard, and, mounting his doorsteps, stood in a closely latticed corner of a porch, and took observations. The square was surrounded by the Rifle-clubs,—the remnants and second-growth of the cropped, but not uprooted Confederate cavalry,—standing thick, two abreast, with guns resting upon each left arm. In the vernacular of the South, Marmor was “a _scallawag_,” for, though once a brave Confederate soldier, he had become a consistent advocate of the idea that the “all men” who are “created free and equal” includes the colored race; and probably no man in the devoted town stood in greater danger than he.