"Any time you'se ready, major, des lemme know, sah. You'll fin' me a handy man 'bout de house, sah."
"All right, Andy, I may need you soon."
"Yassah, de sooner de better, sah," he paused in the door. "Dey gotter get up soon in de mornin', sah, ter get erhead er us Nortons—yassah, dat dey is——"
A message, the first news of the election, cut Andy's gabble short. It spelled Victory! One after another they came from every direction—north, south, east and west—each bringing the same magic word—victory! victory! A state redeemed from negroid corruption! A great state once more in the hands of the children of the men who created it!
It had only been necessary to use force to hold the polls from hordes of ignorant negroes in the densest of the black counties. The white majorities would be unprecedented. The enthusiasm had reached the pitch of mania in these counties. They would all break records.
A few daring men in the black centres of population, where negro rule was at its worst, had guarded the polls under his direction armed with the simple device of a shoemaker's awl, and in every case where it had been used the resulting terror had cleared the place of every negro. In not a single case where this novel weapon had been suddenly and mysteriously thrust into a black skin was there an attempt to return to the polls. A long-suffering people, driven at last to desperation, had met force with force and wrested a commonwealth from the clutches of the vandals who were looting and disgracing it.
Now he would call the little Scalawag to the bar of justice.