It takes a shifty man to accept all these challenges and turn them to his own account. Rutledge was well aware of that fact, but it was not for that reason alone that he ignored them as far as possible. He had started out on the campaign with the high purpose and resolve to pay his countrymen the compliment to talk to them as to men who think, and he had held as religiously to that ideal as his countrymen would permit. Like the other three he was addressing himself principally to the record and claims of Mr. Killam, and the Killam partisans, already fomented by LaRoque’s speech, were in a ferment of disorder. In a perfect shower of interruptions Rutledge had held his way unturned and apparently unnoticing when— "You want to marry ol’ Phillips’ oldes’ daughter, don’t yuh?" split the air like the crack of a bull-whip. Rutledge, hand uplifted in the middle of a sentence, stopped so quickly, so astonished, that he forgot to lower his arm. "Um-huh! Thought that’d fetch yuh! When’re yuh goin’ to marry the nigger’s sister?" Before Rutledge could locate the disturber the crowd was in an uproar. "Kill him!" "Kick him out!" "Hit him in the head with an axe!"—these were only a few of the cries that tore themselves through the pandemonium. Rutledge stood, pale with passion, while the outburst spent itself. It seemed a very long time. "My fellow countrymen," he said, when his voice could be heard—and at the sound of it the assemblage became very quiet—"I will answer my unknown and unseen questioner as though he were a man and not a dog. I have not the honour or the hope to be engaged to Miss Phillips; but, if I had, I would account myself most fortunate. So much for the question.... As for the man who asked it, we certainly have come upon strange times in South Carolina, my countrymen, if the names of women are to be bandied in political debates. It has not surprised me to see you rebuke it. By your quick indignation at such an outrage you have spontaneously vindicated the good name of your State. The dog who made this attack cannot be of South Carolina. If born so he is a degenerate hound. You have no part with him: and before you kick him out there is only left for you to inquire whose collar he wears. What master has fed him and trained him and taught him this trick, and secretly has set him on to make this attack? That is the only question, my countrymen: _Whose hound dog is this_?" "Rutledge! Rutledge! Hurrah for Rutledge!" "Kick him out!" "Shoot the dog!" "Tie a can to his tail!" "Who’s lost a dog?" "Hurrah for Rutledge!" Rutledge’s supporters bestirred their lungs to make the most of the situation. "You go to hell! Hurrah for Killam!"—the defiant voice was the voice of the offender. Senator Killam sprang to his feet with the bound of a panther.