Page:The Clansman (1905).djvu/259

 a friend to hold my son. If he comes before you go, he will kill you on sight as he would a mad dog."

With a sneer, the Captain passed the hotel and led the doctor, still in half-unconscious stupor, toward the depot down past his old slave-quarters. He had given his negroes who remained faithful each a cabin and a lot.

They looked on in awed silence as the Captain proclaimed:

"Fellow citizens, you are the equal of any white man who walks the ground. The white man's day is done. Your turn has come."

As he passed Jake's cabin, the doctor's faithful man stepped suddenly in front of him, looking at the Captain out of the corners of his eyes, and asked:

"Is I yo' equal?"

"Yes."

"Des lak any white man?"

"Exactly."

The negro's fist suddenly shot into Gilbert's nose with the crack of a sledge-hammer, laying him stunned on the pavement.

"Den take dat f'um yo' equal, d—m you!" he cried, bending over his prostrate figure. "I'll show you how to treat my ole marster, you low-down slue-footed devil!"

The stirring little drama roused the doctor, and he turned to his servant with his old-time courtesy, and said:

"Thank you, Jake."

"Come in here, Marse Richard; I knock dem things off'n you in er minute, 'en I get you outen dis town in er jiffy."