It soon became the fashion for these merry masqueraders to call in groups on the pretty girls in town with the offer of their knightly protection. Frequently they spent the evening dancing and making merry, always in full disguise, guarding with the utmost care their identity. The mystery attending such visits, their secret signs and passwords, and the thrilling call of their whistles gave to these performances a peculiar atmosphere of romance and daring, and their visits came to be prized by the fair ones as tributes to their beauty and popularity. A sign of invitation was devised by order of the leader of the raiders and posted one night on the bulletin board of the post office. The girl who wished the honour of such a call had only to express it by walking through the main street to the post office with a scarlet bow of ribbon tied on her left arm, and on the night following, promptly at ten o’clock, the knights on their white-robed horses would call. Stella Butler had immediately become the most popular girl in Independence in spite of her father’s politics. Her beauty was resistless. Every boy on whom she chose to smile was at once her friend and champion. The old Graham house became the most popular meeting place of the youth and beauty of the town, and the only men not welcome there were its real owner and his pugnacious younger brother. Stella was fairly intoxicated with her social victory. Steve led in the devoted circle of her admirers, each day pressing his suit with humble and dogged persistence. She smiled in triumph at his abject surrender but continued to keep him at arm’s length, showering her favours on all who were worth while. She determined to crown her social leadership with a unique fancy dress ball by inviting the Klan masqueraders to dance with a select group of her girl friends at her home. The Klan itself was too deep a mystery for her to note the difference in the character of the raids since the night its gallant horsemen had cheered at her father’s gate. She only knew in a general way that the Klan was born in the unconquered and unconquerable spirit of the old Bourbon South, the South of her mother, the only South worth cultivating socially. So when the Judge’s beautiful daughter, radiant and smiling, walked down the main street of Independence with the scarlet sign of the Klan on her left arm, she paralysed the business of the town. Every clerk stopped work and took his stand at the door or window until she was out of sight. Her name was on every lip. If the raiders should accept her invitation, and appear at the old Graham mansion the evening following, the Judge would be in the anomalous position of a host who seeks the life of his guests. For the destruction of the Klan by exile, imprisonment and death had become the main plank in his political platform under Larkin’s guidance.