"Well, he waited until Colonel Allen got through and then said very quietly that he had done what he had because he had appreciated the force of the objections that had been raised to our intimate association and was always willing to be governed by the proprieties, but that he did not agree with Colonel Allen about uprooting any principle of civilization, that times and conditions had changed, and, while he knew the sentiment of the people would be against our marriage, he thought that sentiment was wrong and would have to give way before the pressure of the new order of things, that the law had married us and we would look to the law to protect us. He said that the work we were doing was worthy of any man's effort, that he had consecrated himself to it and was not going to be driven from it by any predictions of danger, that I was his wife and he would protect me."
"What did the honourable committee think of that?"
"I don't know. Colonel Allen and the other men just turned around without saying another word and left the schoolhouse."
"Did you run the school on after that?"
"Yes, honey, but not for long. One night when those awful people came to destroy things at the schoolhouse as they had done several times before, your father was there to meet them and identify them. Instead of running away as he thought they would, they crowded around him, and after a struggle in the dark they left him lying just outside the door with a broken arm, a pistol-ball through his side, and unconscious from a lick on the head. Some of the coloured people who lived near there heard the row, and after it was all over and all those folks were gone, they slipped up there and found your father and brought him home.
"It was hard for us to get a doctor at first. A young one who lived nearest to us wouldn't come, though we sent for him, and we were all frightened nearly to death. We could hear those awful people yell every once and awhile away off on all sides of the house, then they would fire off guns and pistols—it was an awful night, Hayward. At last old Doctor Wright came about three o'clock in the morning. He lived ten miles or more from us, and we thought that your father, who was raving and moaning, would surely die before he got there. But the old doctor told us as soon as he examined him that he would pull through all right. He said that he had been a surgeon in Stonewall Jackson's corps and that he had seen men forty times worse hurt back in the army in two months. That made us feel a great deal better, I tell you. Your father came to his senses before the old man quit working with him, and when he heard that the young doctor had refused to come to see him (because he was scared, the negro who went for him said), and that the old man had ridden so far through a very cold and wet night to help him, I never heard any one say more to express his thanks than your father did. The old doctor listened to it all without making any answer except an occasional grunt. When he got ready to go home I asked him if he would not prefer to wait till daylight, for fear those awful men would hurt him."
"And did he wait?" interrupted Graham.
"No. He stiffened up as straight as his rheumatism would let him and stumped indignantly out of the house with his pill-bags in one hand and in the other an old pair of home-knit woollen gloves he wouldn't stop to put on—I can see him now."
"Did he ever come back?" asked Graham.
"Oh, yes. The sight of him on his tall pacing bay mare made us glad every two or three days till your father got well."