Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/178

 Washington, where they had gone summoned by Legree and Hogg, to testify to the death of Tim Shelby, they saw a sight that made their souls quake.

At ten o'clock, the Ku Klux Klan held a formal parade through the streets of Hambright. How the news was circulated nobody knew, but it seemed everybody in the county knew of it. The streets were lined with thousands of people who had poured in town that afternoon.

At exactly ten o'clock, a bugle call was heard on the hill to the west of the town, and the muffled tread of soft shod horses came faintly on their ears. Women stood on the sidewalks, holding their babies and smiling, and children were laughing and playing in the streets.

They rode four abreast in perfect order slowly through the town. It was utterly impossibly to recognise a man or a horse, so complete was the simple disguise of the white sheet which blanketed the horse fitting closely over his head and ears and falling gracefully over his form toward the ground.

No citizen of Hambright was in the procession. They were all in the streets watching it pass. There were fifteen hundred men in line. But the reports next day all agreed in fixing the number at over five thousand.

Perkins and Haley had watched it from a darkened room.

"Brother Haley, that's the end! Lord I wish I was back in Michigan, jail er no jail," said Perkins mopping the perspiration from his brow.

"We'll have ter dig out purty quick, I reckon," answered Haley.

"And to think them fools at Washington laughed at us!" cried Perkins clinching his fists.

And that night, mothers and fathers gathered their children to bed with a sense of grateful security they had not felt through years of war and turmoil.