"Um-huh! Thought that'd fetch yuh! When're yuh goin' to marry the nigger's sister?"
Before Rutledge could locate the disturber the crowd was in an uproar.
"Kill him!" "Kick him out!" "Hit him in the head with an axe!"—these were only a few of the cries that tore themselves through the pandemonium.
Rutledge stood, pale with passion, while the outburst spent itself. It seemed a very long time.
"My fellow countrymen," he said, when his voice could be heard—and at the sound of it the assemblage became very quiet—"I will answer my unknown and unseen questioner as though he were a man and not a dog. I have not the honour or the hope to be engaged to Miss Phillips; but, if I had, I would account myself most fortunate. So much for the question.... As for the man who asked it, we certainly have come upon strange times in South Carolina, my countrymen, if the names of women are to be bandied in political debates. It has not surprised me to see you rebuke it. By your quick indignation at such an outrage you have spontaneously vindicated the good name of your State. The dog who made this attack cannot be of South Carolina. If born so he is a degenerate hound. You have no part with him: and before you kick him out there is only left for you to inquire whose collar he wears. What master has fed him and trained him and taught him this trick, and secretly has set him on to make this attack? That is the only question, my countrymen: Whose hound dog is this?"
"Rutledge! Rutledge! Hurrah for Rutledge!" "Kick him out!" "Shoot the dog!" "Tie a can to his tail!" "Who's lost a dog?" "Hurrah for Rutledge!" Rutledge's supporters bestirred their lungs to make the most of the situation.
"You go to hell! Hurrah for Killam!"—the defiant voice was the voice of the offender.
Senator Killam sprang to his feet with the bound of a panther.
"Say, you!"—he leaned far over the edge of the platform and shook his fist in a towering rage at his admirer who now stood revealed—"I give you to understand that I don't want the support of any such damn scoundrel as you or any of your folks, you infernal—" but bless you, though the Senator was screaming his denunciation, the rest of it was lost to history in the war of applause in which "Killam!" and "Rutledge!" seemed to bear about equal weight. The deafening crash of sound seemed to double when Mr. Killam, ceasing his screaming pantomime, stepped quickly over to Rutledge and extended his hand, which Rutledge took and shook with warmth as the old man spoke something that of course the crowd could not hear.
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