Ratcliff, with a gesture of annoyance, rose in his stirrups, and said: “Friends, I’ve nothing to tell you that you can’t find better told in the newspapers. This is no time for talk. We want action now. All’s right at Charleston. Sumter has fallen. That’s the first great step. The Yankees may bluster, but they’ll never fight. The meanest white man at the South is more than a match for any five Yankees. We’ll have them begging to be let into our Southern Confederacy before Christmas. But we won’t receive ’em. No! As Jeff Davis well says, sooner hyenas than Yankees! But we must whip them into decency. And so, before the next Fourth of July, we mean to have our flag flying over Faneuil Hall. We are the master race, my friends! We must show these nigger stealing, beggarly Yankees that they must stand cap in hand when they venture to come into our presence. Don’t believe the croakers who tell you slavery will be weakened by secession. It’s going to be strengthened. So convinced am I of it, that I’ve doubled my number of slaves; and if any of you wish to sell, bring on your niggers! Do you see that flag? Well, that flag has got to wave over all Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. In five years from now every man of you shall own his score of niggers and his hundred acres of land. So go ahead, and aim low when you sight a Yankee.” The speech was received with cheers, and Ratcliff started his horse; but the leading loafer of the crowd seized the reins, and said: “Can’t let yer off so, Kunnle,—can’t no how you kun fix it. We want a reg’lar game speech, sich as you kun make when you dam please. So fire up, and do your prettiest. Be n’t we the master race?” “Pshaw! Let go those reins,” said Ratcliff, cutting the vagabond over his face with the but-end of a riding-whip. The crowd laughed, and the loafer, astonished and sobered, dropped the reins, and put his hand to his eye, which had been badly hit. Ratcliff rode on, but a muttered curse went after him. Seeing the loafer stand feeling of his eye as if had been hurt, Vance said to him from the window: “Go to the apothecary’s, and tell him to give you something to bathe it in.” “Go ter the ’pothecary’s! With nary a red in my pocket! Strannger, don’t try to fool this child.” “Here’s money, if you want it.” “Money? I should like ter see the color of it, strannger.” “Hold your hat, then.” And Vance dropped into the hat something wrapped in a newspaper which the loafer incredulously unfolded. Finding in it a five-dollar gold-piece, he stared first at the money, then at Vance, and said: “Strannger, I’d say, God bless yer, if I didn’t think, what a poor cuss like I could say would rayther harm than help. Haven’t no influence with God A’mighty, strannger. But you’re a man,—you air,—not a sneakin’ ’ristocrat as despises a poor white feller more ’n he does a nigger. I’ve seen yer somewhar afore, but can’t say whar.” “Go and attend to your eye, my friend,” said Vance.