"Miss Ainslie—I—I beg your pardon, ma'am-but—"
She removed the handkerchief, but the tears were still running down her face as she said, glancing round the circle of sympathizing faces:
"Do stop this, gentlemen. It's all a mistake. I know it must be a mistake!"
"We couldn't help it, ma'am," said one impulsive youth, putting in before the elders had time to speak; "the niggers was marching on the town here. Did you suppose we was going to sit still and let them burn and ravage without opposition? Oh, we haven't got so low as that, if the Yankees did outnumber us. Not yet!"
There was a sneering tone in his voice which did more than sympathy could, to restore her equanimity. So she said, with a hint of a smile on her yet tearful face,
"The worst thing those poor fellows meant to do, gentlemen, was to make a parade over their new-found privileges—march up to the polls, vote, and march home again. They are just like a crowd of boys over a drum and fife, as you know. They carefully excluded from the line all who were not voters, and I had them arranged so that their names would come alphabetically, thinking it might be handier for the officers; though I don't know anything about how an election is conducted," she added, with an ingenuous blush. "It's all my fault, gentlemen! I did not think any trouble could come of it, or I would not have allowed it for a moment. I thought it would be better for them to come in order, vote, and go home than to have them scattered about the town and perhaps getting into trouble."
"So 'twould," said the sheriff. "Been a first-rate thing if we'd all understood it—first-rate."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, gentlemen—so sorry, and I'm afraid one man is killed. Would one of you be kind enough to go for a doctor?"
"Here is one," said several voices, as a young man stepped forward and raised his hat respectfully.
"I will go and see him," he said.