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 On this day the county Court House lost its staid solemnity as if conscious of the day, also its importance. About the wide open space which surrounded it were hitched the teams of the early arrivals when the sun greeted the city with its first red rays. Negro boys, whose fathers had allowed them to accompany the ménage on the trip, as well as hired hands of planters, busied themselves excitedly feeding their charges, the sleep of an hour or so before driven from their eyes with a dash of cold water from the pump in the court yard or after a hasty ablution in some stream on the way into town. Young white boys, likewise, who had come from the rural districts with their fathers also busied themselves with their teams and made ready for a day of jollity.

Among those who had driven in the previous night and were stopping at the Planters Hotel was Professor Armstrong, browned by the hot sun in which he had been living since departing from the North at the end of his college teaching career, ended so suddenly at the faculty meeting. Since arriving in the South he had disdained to stop in the hot close city but had gone to his plantation out on the Congaree River, leaving his town house in the charge of servants. Desiring companionship and knowing that the best of the country would be at the hotel he decided to stop there over night rather than at his house.

Having retired early the night before he was among the early risers. This Big Monday crowd always had a fascination for him, even when a boy and his father used to bring him to the city. He liked to circulate among the