A volley of oaths and abusive epithets was rolling from Tommy Baker’s lips; which was indeed their most familiar utterance when addressing persons of color; and some members of the company began to return the charge in kind.
“Attention, company!” shouted Capt. Doc. “It is going to rain, and we had best house our guns. We won’t hold any contention with these men. Now, yo’ hush up! I’ll settle this matter. Open order, and let them go through.”
The command was obeyed, but not without murmurs of discontent, which, however, were soon quieted, as a slight shower descended, and they hastened off to the armory.
Marmor, with his two little children, had been standing a few rods away, watching and praising the exercise.
When the altercation occurred, being a Warden of the town, he sent John Carr, the Town Marshal, or Chief of Police, to ascertain its cause; but it was passed before his arrival at the scene.
CHAPTER IV.
LEGAL REDRESS.
‘O thou dread Power! whose empire-giving hand
Has oft been stretched to shield the honored land!’
So trivial a quarrel as that narrated in the closing part of our last chapter, had it occurred elsewhere than in a community in which the inhabitants had so recently sustained the relations of masters and slaves, would scarcely have elicited remark upon a subsequent day; but over the three or four hundred colored, and forty or fifty white residents of Baconsville there settled a dark cloud of anxiety and apprehension of coming evil.