He could see now his drawn face with its deep lines and his eyes flashing with passion as he said this. These words haunted Gaston now with strange power as he walked along the silent streets. He walked down past his old home, stopped and leaned on the gate, and looked at it long and lovingly. What a flood of tender and sorrowful memories swept his soul! He lived over again the days of despair when his mother was an invalid. He recalled their awful poverty, and then the last terrible day with that mob of negroes trampling over the lawn and overrunning the house. He saw the white face of his mother whose memory he loved as he loved life. And now he recalled a sentence from her dying lips. He had all but lost its meaning. “You will grow to be a brave strong man. You will fight this battle out, and win back our home, and bring your own bride here in the far away days of sunshine and success I see for you.” _You will fight this battle out_--he had almost lost that sentence in his hunger for that which followed. It came to his soul now ringing like a trumpet call to honour and duty. He turned on his heel and walked rapidly home. He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. “We will fight it out on the old lines,” he said to McLeod next day. “You will find me a pretty good fighter.” “Unto death, let it be,” answered Gaston firmly setting his lips. “I admire your pluck, but I’m sorry for your judgment. You know you’re beaten before you begin.” “Defeat that’s seen has lost its bitterness before it comes.” “Then get ready the flowers for the funeral. I hoped you would have better sense. You are one of the men now I ’ll have to crush first, thoroughly, and for all time. I’m not afraid of the old fools. I ’ll be fair enough to tell you this,” said McLeod. “Not since Legree’s day has the Republican party had so dangerous a man at its head,” said Gaston thoughtfully to himself as McLeod strode away across the square. “He has ten times the brains of his older master, and none of his superstitions. He will give me a hard fight.” CHAPTER III--FLORA HAMBRIGHT had changed but little in the eighteen years of peace that had followed the terrors of Legree’s régime. The population had doubled, though but few houses had been built. The town had not grown from the development of industry, but for a very simple reason--the country people had moved into the town, seeking refuge from a new terror that was growing of late more and more a menace to a country home, the roving criminal negro. The birth of a girl baby was sure to make a father restless, and when the baby looked up into his face one day with the soft light of a maiden, he gave up his farm and moved to town. The most important development of these eighteen years was the complete alienation of the white and black races as compared with the old familiar trust of domestic life.