IGGIN was no insignificant opponent; he held weapons as powerful as fire applied to inflammable material. The papers were filled with accounts of race rioting in all parts of the South, and in his speeches on the stump, through the length and breadth of the county, he kept his particular version of the bloody happenings well before his hearers.

“This is a white man's country,” was the key-note of all his hot tirades, “and the white man is bound to rule.” He accomplished one master-stroke. There was to be a considerable gathering of the Confederate, veterans at an annual picnic at Shell Valley, a few miles from Springtown, and by no mean diplomacy Wiggin had, by shrewdly ingratiating himself into the good graces of the committee of arrangements, managed to have himself invited as the only orator of the occasion. He meant to make it the greatest day of the campaign, and in some respects, as will be seen he did.

The farmers came from all parts of the county in their best attire, in their best turnouts, from plain, springless road-wagons to glittering buggies. The wood which stretched on all sides from the spring was filled with vehicles, horses, mules, and even oxen.

The grizzled veterans, battered as much by post-bellum hardship and toil as by war, came with their wives, sons, and daughters, and brought baskets to the rich contents of which any man was welcome. A crude platform had been erected near the spring under the shadiest trees, and upon this the speaker of the day was to hold forth. Behind the little impromptu table holding a glass pitcher of water and a tumbler, erected for Wiggin's special benefit, were a number of benches made of undressed boards. And to these seats the wives and daughters of the leading citizens were invited.

Jabe Parsons, being a man of importance as a land-owner and an old soldier, was instructed on his arrival in his rickety buggy to escort his wife, who was gorgeously arrayed in a new green-and-red checked gingham gown with a sunbonnet to match, to the front seat on the platform, and he obeyed with a sort of ploughman's swagger that indicated his pride in the possession of a wife so widely known and respected. Indeed, no woman who had arrived—and she had come later than the rest—had caused such a ripple of comment. Always liked for her firmness in any stand she took in matters of church or social life, since her Amazonian rescue of Pete Warren from the very halter of death she was even more popular. The women of the county had not given much thought to the actual guilt or innocence of the boy, but they wanted Mrs. Parsons—as a specimen of their undervalued sex—to be right in that instance, as she had always been about every other matter upon which she had stood flat-footed, and so they all but cheered her on this first public appearance after conduct which 'had been so widely talked about.

Really, if Wiggin could have had the reception Mrs. Parsons received from beaming eyes and faces he would have felt that his star, which had been rather below the horizon than above of late, had become a fixed ornament in the political heavens. But Wiggin gave no thought to her, and there's where he made a mistake. Women were beneath the notice of serious men, Wiggin thought, except as a means of controlling a husband's vote, and there he made another mistake. It would have been well for him if he could have noticed the fires of contempt in Mrs. Parsons' eyes as he made his way through the crowd, bowing right and left, and took his seat in the only chair on the platform, and proceeded, of course, to take a drink of water.

A country parson, while the multitude sat upon the grass, crude benches, buggy-cushions, or heaps of pine needles, opened the ceremonies with a long-winded prayer, composed of selections from all the prayers he knew by rote and ending with something resembling a benediction. Then a young lady was asked to recite a dramatic poem relating to the “Lost Cause,” and she did it with such telling effect that the gray heads of the old soldiers sank to their chests, and, in memory of camp-fire, battle-field, and comrades left in unmarked graves, the tears flowed down furrowed cheeks and strong forms were shaken by sobs.

It was into this holy silence that the unmoved, preoccupied Wiggin rose to cast his burning brand. Through curtains of tears he laid his fuse to hidden magazines of powder.

“I believe in getting right down to business,” he began, in a crisp, rasping voice that reached well to the outskirts of the crowd. “There's nothing today that is as important to you, fellow-citizens, as the correct use of the ballot. I am a candidate for your votes. I mean to represent you in the next legislature, and I don't intend to be foiled by the tricks, lies, and underhand work of a gang of stuck-up town men who laugh at your honest appearance and homely ways. God knows you are the salt of the earth, and when I hear men of that stamp making fun of you behind your backs it makes me mad. My father was a mountain farmer, and when men throw dirt on folks of your sort they throw it into the tenderest recesses of my being and it smarts like salt in a fresh cut.”

There was applause from a group in the edge of the crowd led by long, tall Dan Willis, and it spread uncertainly to other parts of the gathering.

“Hit 'em, blast 'em, hit 'em, Wiggin,” a man near Willis shouted; “hit 'em!”

“You bet I'll hit 'em, brother,” Wiggin panted, as he rolled up his coat-sleeve and pulled down his rumpled cuff. “That's what I'm here for. I'm here, by the holy stars, to show you people a few things which have been overlooked. I intend to go into the history of this case. I want you all to look back a few weeks. A gang of worthless negroes in Darley became so bad and openly defiant in their rowdyism that they were literally running the town. Whenever they would be hauled up before the mayor for disgraceful conduct some old slave-holder, who used to own them or their daddies, would come up and pay their fine and they'd be turned loose again. The black scamps became so spoiled that whenever country people would come in town they would laugh at them, imitate their talk, call them po' white trash, and push them off the sidewalks. Some of you mountain men stood it, God bless your Caucasian bones, just as long as human endurance would let you, and then you formed a secret gang that went into Darley one night and pulled their dives and gave them a lashing on their bare backs that brought about a reform. As every Darley man will tell you, it purified the very air. The negroes were put to work, and they didn't hover like swarms of buzzards round the public square. All of which showed plainly that the cowhide was the only corrective that the niggers knew about or cared a cent for. Trying them in a mayor's court was elevating them to the level of a white man, and they liked it.”

“You bet!” cried out Dan Willis, and a laugh went round which spurred Wiggin to further flights of vituperation.

“Now to my next step in this history,” he thundered. “In that gang of soundly thrashed scamps there were two who were chums, as I could prove by sworn testimony. Those black fiends refused to submit passively. They skulked around making sullen threats and trying to incite race riot. Failing in this, what did they do? One of them, being hand in glove with Carson Dwight, who says he's going to beat me in this election, applied to him for a job and was sent out to Dwight's farm near to that of Abe Johnson, who is thought—by some—to have been the leader of the thrashing delegation. That nigger, Pete Warren, was promptly joined by his black pal, and Johnson and his wife, one of the best women in this State, were foully murdered in the dead hours of the night as they lay sleeping in their beds. Who did it? I know who did it. You know who did it. Fellow-citizens, those two niggers, with their backs still smarting and their tongues still wagging, were the devils who did the deed.”

Low muttering was heard throughout the crowd as men turned to one another to make comment on the statement. In its incipiency it meant no more, perhaps, than that reason, hard driven by rising emotion, was honestly striving to keep the equitable poise which had recently governed it, but it sounded to the thoughtless, inflammable element like sullen, swelling acquiescence to the bitter charges, and they took it up. Wiggin paused, drank from the tumbler, and watched his flashing fuse in its sinuous course through the assemblage.

Mrs. Parsons was near the edge of the platform, and Pole Baker, rising from the grass near by, where he had been coolly whittling a stick, stealthily approached her.

“Great goodness, Mrs. Parsons,” he whispered in her ear, “that skunk is cutting a wide swath to-day, sure! He could git up a lynching-bee right here in five minutes if he had any sort of material. The only thing of the right color is that old woman selling ginger-cakes and cider at the spring. Don't you think I'd better slip down and tell her to go home?”

“It might save the old thing's neck,” Mrs. Parsons answered, in the same half-amused spirit. “If he keeps on I don't think I'll be able to hold my seat. Why don't you say something?”

“Me? Oh, I ain't no public speaker, Mrs. Parsons. That oily gab of Wiggin's would twist me into a hundred knots, and Carson Dwight would cuss me out for making matters worse. I never feel like talking unless I'm drunk, and then I'm tongue-tied.”

“Well, I don't git drunk and I don't git tongue-tied!” grunted Mrs. Parsons; “and I tell you, Pole, if that fool keeps on I'll either talk or bust.”

“Well, don't bust—we need women like you right now,” Baker smiled. “But the truth is, if some'n' ain't done for our side this thing will sweep Carson Dwight clean out of the field.”

“Yes, because men are born fools,” retorted the woman. “Look at their faces, the last one of them right now is mad enough to lynch a nigger baby, and a gal baby at that.”

With a laugh, Pole went back to his seat on the grass for Wiggin was thundering again.

“What happened next!” he demanded, bending over his table, a hand on each end of it, his keen, alert eyes sweeping like twin search-lights into the deeps of the countenances turned to him. “Why, just this and nothing more. Knowing that the jack-leg lawyers of that measly town would clog the wheels of justice for their puny fees, and hold those fiends over for other hellishness, some of you rose and took the law into your own hands. You jerked one to glory as quick as you laid hands on him, and part of you were hard on the track of his mate, when my honorable opponent, not wanting to lose the fee he was to get for pulling the case through, met the mob and managed, by a lot of grand-stand playing and solemn promises to see that the negro was legally tried, to put him in jail.

“Those promises he kept like the honorable gentleman he is,” Wiggin snorted, tossing back his hair in white rage and rolling up his sleeves again. “You know how he kept his word to the public. He organized a secret band of his dirty associates in town, dressed 'em up like White Caps, and they went to the jail and took the nigger out. Then they hid him in a cellar of a store where you all buy supplies, out of the goodness of your patriotic souls, and later sent him in a new suit of clothes to Chattanooga, where he is now engaged in the same sort of life that he was here, an idle, good-for-nothing, lazy tramp, who says he's as good as any white man that ever wore shoe-leather and no doubt thinks he will some day marry a white woman.”

The rising storm burst, and Wiggin stood above it calmly viewing it in all its subdued and open fury. Shouts of rage rent the air. Men with blanched faces, men with gleaming eyes, rose from their seats, as if a call to their manhood for instantaneous action had been sounded, and walked about muttering threats, grinding their teeth, and clinching their brawny hands.

“Ah, ha!” Wiggin bellowed; “I see you catch my idea. But I'm not through. Just wait!”

He paused to drink again, and Pole Baker, with a grave look in his honest eye approached the sculpturesque shape of Mrs. Parsons and nudged her.

“Did you ever in yore life?” he said; but staring him in the eyes steadily, the woman seemed not to hear what he was saying. Her lower lip was twitching and there was an expression of settled determination in her eyes. Baker, wondering, moved back to his place, for Wiggin had levelled his guns again.

“And the man that was at the head of it, what is he doing right now? Why he's leaning back in his rocking-chair in his law-office drawing a fat pension from his rich old daddy, taking in big fees for such legal work as that, and fairly splitting his sides laughing at you folks, who he calls a lot of sap-headed hillbillies, fit only for hopping clods and feeding hogs on swill and pussley weeds. Oh, that was a picnic—that trick he and those town rowdies put up on you! It was a gentle rebuke to you, and when he gets to the legislature he says he—”

“Legislature be damned!” Dan Willis roared, and the crowd took up his cry.

“Oh yes, you'll vote him in,” Wiggin went on, with a vast air of mock depression and reproach; “you think you won't now, but when he gets up and tells his side of it with a forced tear or two, your women folks will say, 'Poor boy!' and tell you what to do at the polls.”

Comprehensive applause greeted the speaker as he sat down. Hats were thrown in the air and Dan Willis organized and gave three resounding cheers.