“Mr. Steve Hoyle wuz dar ter see Miss Stella an’ he run in an’ pulled ’em off. When I lit out for home I wuz er sight sho nuff. I hear Miss Stella come up ter Mr. Steve an’ bust out laffin’ fit ter kill herself.”
“And you don’t know what became of the note?”
“Yassah! cose sah! dey tuck hit away fum me and tore it up—dat’s what I fit ’em ’bout—yassah!” John’s face was white with rage. He sent Alfred home, sat down at his desk, and drew out the papers he had laid aside. The Judge had won. He had covered him with infamy in the eyes of his beautiful daughter and had dared to perpetrate this infamous outrage. He couldn’t understand Aunt Julie Ann’s part in the row, but the evidence of Alfred’s plight could not be mistaken.
For three hours with stern set face he worked completing the case of Graham vs. Butler. At four o’clock he had entered the suit and an officer served the papers on the astonished Judge.
CHAPTER VI—SCALAWAG AND CARPETBAGGER
JOHN GRAHAM, as leader of the opposition, as well as for personal reasons, was early on the grounds with half a dozen trusted lieutenants to watch the action of the Republican County Convention. He was curious to observe the effects of his suit on the Judge and his followers. He soon discovered that the scathing recital of fraud which he had incorporated into the form of his complaint as published in the morning’s paper was a mistake. It had been accepted by the mottled crew of nondescript politicians and Negroes as proof positive of his own depravity and the Judge’s spotless purity.
The Convention was seated in the open air on improvised boards. The Judge was peculiarly sensitive to the atmosphere of a crowd of Negroes. He had to associate with them to get their votes, but like all poor white men of Southern birth, he hated them without measure.
This Convention of his home county was the most important crisis in the development of his ambitions as the leader of his party in the South.