“Listen, dear,” he went on eagerly. “Last night I dreamed the South had risen from her ruins. I saw you there. I saw our home standing amid a bower of roses your hands had planted. The full moon wrapped it in soft light, while you and I walked hand in hand in silence beneath our trees. But fairer and brighter than the moon was the face of her I loved, and sweeter than all the songs of birds the music of her voice!”
A tear dimmed the girl’s warm eyes, and a deeper flush mantled her cheeks, as she lifted her face and whispered:
“Kiss me.”
CHAPTER IX
The King Amuses Himself
With savage energy the Great Commoner pressed to trial the first impeachment of a President of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanours.
His bill to confiscate the property of the Southern people was already pending on the calendar of the House. This bill was the most remarkable ever written in the English language or introduced into a legislative body of the Aryan race. It provided for the confiscation of ninety per cent. of the land of ten great States of the American Union. To each negro in the South was allotted forty acres from the estate of his former master, and the remaining millions of acres were to be divided among the “loyal who had suffered by reason of the Rebellion.”
The execution of this, the most stupendous crime ever conceived by an English lawmaker, involving the exile and ruin of millions of innocent men, women, and children, could not be intrusted to Andrew Johnson.