Since the death of Mrs. Seymour the negroes had been busily plying their offensive vocation filling to the very brim the vat of vicious fermentation. The air at night was laden with ribaldry and the sounds of guns. The old master's labors were greatly multiplied too, since the negroes were all the while in some exasperating way or other celebrating the "Emancipation Proclamation," the dawn of freedom. Their presence had become a serious menace, an ever recurring cause of alarm. His resources, too, were almost gone--the cattle had been slaughtered in the range, the horses appropriated and returned when convenient, and he dared not ask why this spoliation of his property. Ned would occasionally announce his arrival upon the plantation by furious blasts from a great cracked horn. He would be dressed from head to foot in a blue uniform with bright brass buttons and yellow cords upon the revers and sleeves of his jacket, and a coarse slouched hat with crossed swords in front, a huge yellow cord with tassels around the crown, and it surmounted by a peacock's feather. The old master saw with disgust the foolish negro from the verandah, marching up and down the carriage way with his bright musket, going through the manual of arms, "Sport Harms! Horder arms! Charge bagonets!" Aleck and Ephraim and Henry were dressed in the same fashion and going through the same evolutions on another part of the plantation. Now and then a discharge from the guns accompanied by demoniacal yells would frighten poor Alice almost to death. In the dead hours of night these brutal negroes to terrify her and her father would drill in the front yard of Ingleside with vulgar and boisterous commands, and before breaking ranks they would discharge their muskets with horrifying screams--"Jess immitatin de brav sojer boys at Fort Piller," they said. Ingleside was virtually a camp of military instruction! "Clarissa," Alice exclaimed, "we must go away from here. We will be murdered if we do not get away from these horrid negroes, I shall die with fright if I remain here any longer. They can come at any hour of the day or night and kill us. Father is old and feeble and cannot protect me, and you know, Clarissa, I cannot protect him. Please go to him and tell him we must get away this very day."