The officer in command, noting an uneasy tension along his lines, crossed the street in front of his men exhorting them.
“Stand your ground, boys!” he said firmly.
“Better save your hides, you scalawag skunks!” yelled an urchin from the crowd.
The leader of the Klan was now but ten feet away, towering tall, white and terrible, with an apparently interminable procession of mounted ghosts behind him.
The line of police swayed in the centre.
The Clansman leader lifted his hand, and the shrill scream of his whistle rang three times, and each white figure answered with a long piercing cry.
The police cordon broke into scurrying fragments and melted into the throngs on the sidewalks, while the procession of white and scarlet horsemen, without a pause, passed slowly on amid shouts of laughter from the people who had witnessed the fiasco.
“Well, I’ll be d———! excuse me, Miss Stella!”
Suggs cried in a stupor of blank amazement, his round little figure suddenly collapsing like a punctured balloon.
“You can’t help admiring such men, Captain!” the girl laughed.