“Yes, I said howdy, when he stopped to get a drink of water, and he give me a whistle,” she replied with a pout of her pretty lips and a frown. Tom seized her by the arm and shook her. “Didn’t I tell you to run every time you seed a nigger unless I was with you!” “Yes, but he wasn’t hurtin’ me and you are!” she cried bursting into tears. “I’ve a notion to whip you good for this!” Tom stormed. “Don’t Tom, she won’t do it any more, will you Flora?” pleaded Gaston taking her in his arms and starting to the house with her. When they reached the house, Tom was still pale and trembling with excitement. “Lord, there’s so many triflin’ niggers loafin’ round the county now stealing and doin’ all sorts of devilment, I’m scared to death about that child. She don’t seem any more afraid of ’em than she is of a cat.” “I don’t believe anybody would hurt Flora, Tom,--she’s such a little angel,” said Gaston kissing the tears from the child’s face. “She is cute--ain’t she?” said Tom with pride. “I’ve wished many a time lately I’d gone out West with them Yankee fellers that took such a likin’ to me in the war. They told me that a poor white man had a chance out there, and that there wern’t a nigger in twenty miles of their home. But then I lost my leg, how could I go?” He sat dreaming with open eyes for a moment and continued, looking tenderly at Flora, “But, baby, don’t you dare go nigh er nigger, or let one get nigh you no more’n you would a rattlesnake!” “I won’t Pappy!” she cried with an incredulous smile at his warning of danger that made Tom’s heart sick. She was all joy and laughter, full of health and bubbling life. She believed with a child’s simple faith that all nature was as innocent as her own heart. Tom smoothed her curls and kissed her at last, and she slipped her arm around his neck and squeezed it tight. “Ain’t she purty and sweet now?” he exclaimed. “Tom, you ’ll spoil her yet,” warned Gaston as he smiled and took his leave, throwing a kiss to Flora as he passed through the little yard gate. Tom had built a fence close around his house when Flora was a baby to shut her in while he was at work. Two days later about five o’clock in the afternoon as Gaston sat in his office writing a letter, to his sweetheart, his face aglow with love and the certainty that she was his, as he read and re-read her last glowing words he was startled by the sudden clang of the court house bell. At first he did not move, only looking up from his paper. Sometimes mischievous boys rang the bell and ran down the steps before any one could catch them. But the bell continued its swift stroke seeming to grow louder and wilder every moment. He saw a man rush across the square, and then the bell of the Methodist, and then of the Baptist churches joined their clamour to the alarm. He snapped the lid of his desk, snatched his hat and ran down the steps. As he reached the street, he heard the long piercing cry of a woman’s voice, high, strenuous, quivering!