They passed bills authorising the issue of twenty-five millions of dollars in bonds, and actually issued and stole fourteen millions, and never built one foot of railroad. When Legree’s movement was at its high tide, Ezra Perkins sought Uncle Pete Sawyer one night in behalf of a pet measure of his pending in the House. Peter was seated by his table counting by the light of a candle three big piles of gold. His face was wreathed in smiles. “Peter, you seem well pleased with the world tonight?” said Ezra gleefully. “Well, brudder, you see dem piles er yaller money?” “Yes, it is a fine sight.” Uncle Pete smacked his lips and grinned from ear to ear. “Well, brudder, I tells you. I ben sol’ seben times in my life, but ’fore Gawd dat’s de fust time I ebber got de money!” Uncle Pete dreamed that night that Congress passed a law extending the blessings of a “republican form of government” to North Carolina for forty years and that the Legislature never adjourned. But the Legislature finally closed, and in a drunken revel which lasted all night. They had bankrupted the state, destroyed its school funds, and increased its debt from sixteen to forty-two millions of dollars, without adding one cent to its wealth or power. Legree then organised a Municipal and County Ring to exploit the towns, cities, and counties, having passed a bill vacating all county and city offices. This Ring secured the control of Hambright and levied a tax of twenty-five per cent for municipal purposes! Tom Camp’s little home was assessed for eighty-five dollars in taxes. Mrs. Gaston’s home was assessed for one hundred and sixty dollars. They could have raised a million as easily as the sum of these assessments. It cost the United States government two hundred millions of dollars that year to pay the army required to guard the Legrees and their “loyal” men while they were thus establishing and maintaining “a republican form of government” in the South. CHAPTER XVII--THE SECOND REIGN OF TERROR IT was the bluest Monday the Rev. John Durham ever remembered in his ministry. A long drought had parched the corn into twisted and stunted little stalks that looked as though they had been burnt in a prairie fire. The fly had destroyed the wheat crop and the cotton was dying in the blistering sun of August, and a blight worse than drought, or flood, or pestilence, brooded over the stricken land, flinging the shadow of its Black Death over every home. The tax gatherer of the new “republican form of government,” recently established in North Carolina now demanded his pound of flesh.