“Gentlemen, your duty is plain. Hold your land. It’s yours. You’ve worked it for a lifetime. These officers here tell you that old Andy Johnson has pardoned General Worth and that you have no rights on the land without his contract. I tell you old Andy Johnson has no right to pardon a rebel, and that he will be hung before another year. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and B. F. Butler are running this country. Mr. Stevens has never failed yet on anything he has set his hand. He has promised to give you the land. Stick to it. Shake your fist in old Andy Johnson’s face and the face of this Bureau and tell them so.” “Dat we will!” shouted a negro woman, as Tim Shelby rose to speak. “You have suffered,” said Tim. “Now let the white man suffer. Times have changed. In the old days the white man said, ‘John, come black my boots’! And the poor negro had to black his boots. I expect to see the day when I will say to a white man, ‘Black my boots!’ And the white man will tip his hat and hurry to do what I tell him.” “Yes, Lawd! Glory to God! Hear dat now!” “We will drive the white men out of this country. That is the purpose of our friends at Washington. If white men want to live in the South they can become our servants. If they don’t like their job they can move to a more congenial climate. You have Congress on your side, backed by a million bayonets. There is no President. The Supreme Court is chained. In San Domingo no white man is allowed to vote, hold office, or hold a foot of land. We will make this mighty South a more glorious San Domingo.” A frenzied shout rent the air. Tim and Legree were carried on the shoulders of stalwart men in triumphant procession with five hundred crazy negroes yelling and screaming at their heels. The officers made their escape in the confusion and beat a hasty retreat to town. They reported the situation to headquarters, and asked for instructions. CHAPTER XII--RED SNOW DROPS THE spirit of anarchy was in the tainted air. The bonds that held society were loosened. Government threatened to become organised crime instead of the organised virtue of the community. The report of crimes of unusual horror among the ignorant and the vicious began now to startle the world. The Rev. John Durham on his rounds among the poor discovered a little negro boy whom the parents had abandoned to starve. His father had become a drunken loafer at Independence and the Freedman’s Bureau delivered the child to his mother and her sister who lived in a cabin about two miles from Hambright, and ordered them to care for the boy. A few days later the child had disappeared. A search was instituted, and the charred bones were found in an old ash heap in the woods near this cabin. The mother had knocked him in the head and burned the body in a drunken orgie with dissolute companions.