Within the next hour every individual negro in the state known to be in possession of a gun or pistol was disarmed. Resistance was futile. The attack was so sudden and so unexpected, the attacking party so overwhelming at the moment, each black man surrendered without a blow and a successful revolution was accomplished in a night without a shot or the loss of a life.
Next morning the Governor paced the floor of his office in the Capitol with the rage of a maddened beast, and Schlitz, the Carpetbagger, was summoned for a second council of war. It proved to be a very important meeting in the history of His Excellency.
The editor sat at his desk that day smiling in quiet triumph as he read the facetious reports wired by his faithful lieutenants from every district of the Klan. An endless stream of callers had poured through his modest little room and prevented any attempt at writing. He had turned the columns over to his assistants and the sun was just sinking in a smother of purple glory when he turned from his window and began to write his leader for the day.
It was an easy task. A note of defiant power ran through a sarcastic warning to the Governor that found the quick. The editorial flashed with wit and stung with bitter epigram. And there was in his consciousness of power a touch of cruelty that should have warned the Scalawag against his next act of supreme folly.
But His Excellency had bad advisers, and the wheels of Fate moved swiftly toward the appointed end.
Norton wrote this editorial with a joy that gave its crisp sentences the ring of inspired leadership. He knew that every paper in the state read by white men and women would copy it and he already felt in his heart the reflex thrill of its call to his people.
He had just finished his revision of the last paragraph when a deep, laughing voice beside his chair slowly said:
"May I come in?"
He looked up with a start to find the tawny figure of the girl whose red hair he had stroked that night bowing and smiling. Her white, perfect teeth gleamed in the gathering twilight and her smile displayed two pretty dimples in the brownish red cheeks.
"I say, may I come in?" she repeated with a laugh.