"Who?"
"Everybody. We've all been thinking until these editorials began that you were a leader of the Klan."
A smile played about the corners of the deep-set brown eyes as he swung carelessly back to his desk and waved the printer to his task with a friendly sweep of his long arm:
"Let 'em think again!"
A shout in the Court House Square across the narrow street caused him to lift his head with a frown:
"Salesday—of course—the first Monday—doomsday for the conquered South—God, the horror of it all!"
He laid his pencil down, walked to the window and looked out on the crowd of slouching loafers as they gathered around the auctioneer's block. The negroes outnumbered the whites two to one.
A greasy, loud-mouthed negro, as black as ink, was the auctioneer.
"Well, gemmen an' feller citizens," he began pompously, "de fust piece er property I got ter sell hain't no property 'tall—hit's dese po' folks fum de County Po' House. Fetch 'em up agin de wall so de bidders can see 'em——"
He paused and a black court attendant led out and placed in line against the weatherbeaten walls fifty or sixty inmates of the County Poor House—all of them white men and women. Most of them were over seventy years old, and one with the quickest step and brightest eye, a little man of eighty-four with snow-white hair and beard, was the son of a hero of the American Revolution. The women were bareheaded and the blazing Southern sun of August beat down piteously on their pinched faces.