Three pistol shots rang out like a single report! Three more! and three more! There was a wild scramble. Taken completely by surprise, the negroes fled in confusion. Four lay on the ground. Two were dead, one mortally wounded and three more had crawled away with bullets in their bodies. There in the midst of the heap lay the unconscious girl gagged. “Is she hurt?” cried a mountain boy. “Can’t tell, take her to the house quick.” They laid her across the bed in the room that had been made sweet and tidy for the bride and groom. The mother bent over her quickly with a light. Just where the blue veins crossed in her delicate temple there was a round hole from which a scarlet stream was running down her white throat. Without a word the mother brought Tom, showed it to him, and then fell into his arms and burst into a flood of tears. “Don’t, don’t cry so Annie! It might have been worse. Let us thank God she was saved from them brutes.” Hose’s friends crowded round Tom now with tear-stained faces. “Tom, you don’t know how broke up we all are over this. Poor child, we did the best we could.” “It’s all right, boys. You’ve been my friends to-night. You’ve saved my little gal. I want to shake hands with you and thank you. If you hadn’t been here--My God, I can’t think of what would ’a happened! Now it’s all right. She’s safe in God’s hands.” The next morning when Tom Camp called at the parsonage to see the Preacher and arrange for the funeral of his daughter he found him in bed. “Dr. Durham is quite sick, Mr. Camp, but he’ll see you,” said Mrs. Durham. “Thank you, M’am.” She took the old soldier by the hand and her voice choked as she said, “You have my heart’s deepest sympathy in your awful sorrow.” “It’ll be all for the best, M’am. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. I will still say, Blessed is the name of the Lord!” “I wish I had such faith.” She led Tom into the room where the Preacher lay. “Why, what’s this, Preacher? A bandage over your eye, looks like somebody knocked you in the head?” “Yes, Tom, but it’s nothing. I’ll be all right by tomorrow. You needn’t tell me anything that happened at your house. I’ve heard the black hell-lit news. It will be all over this county by night and the town will be full of grim-visaged men before many hours. Your child has not died in vain. A few things like this will be the trumpet of the God of our fathers that will call the sleeping manhood of the Anglo-Saxon race to life again. I must be up and about this afternoon to keep down the storm. It is not time for it to break.” “But, Preacher, what happened to you?” “Oh! nothing much, Tom.” “I’ll tell you what happened,” cried Mrs. Durham standing erect with her great dark eyes flashing with anger.