CHAPTER XX

LOGAN'S SPEECH AT NEW RICHMOND

ROMPTLY at the appointed hour the imperturbable

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"Black Jack, Eagle of the Thirty-first," as his admirers proudly styled him, mounted the rude platform that had been erected in the court house campus. The most casual observer would have noted that the audience was intensely hostile. Only a born hero would have dared to face it, much less to speak his mind fully, without reservation or hesitation. The very air was electric, a-tremble, almost a-shudder, with ominous expectation and apprehension. Occasionally some one would shout, "Hooray for Jeff Davis!" Then others, "Down with the Lincoln hirelings!" "To hell with the G-d d-d nigger worshipers!"

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Many men, dark-browed and scowling, openly wore revolvers and bowie-knives. One, bare-headed, a revolver in each hand, a bowie-knife held crosswise between his large obtruding tobacco-stained teeth, and a jingling spur on each booth, Jake Rindafer by name, forced his way through the crowd down to a front seat. His rude act and grotesque appearance excited neither laughter nor resentment. score of dangerous men, desperadoes and Knights of the Golden Circle, under the leadership of Bill Snodgrass, champion bully, notorious ex-thief, penitentiary graduate and postgraduate, filed in and took places about the speaker's stand. They were all heavily armed. It was not known whether they meant to capture Logan, or kill him outright-probably

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the latter. They all held their hands in their hip-pockets. The reason was obvious.

The effigy of a negro was let down from one of the court house windows; and presently, from another window, there was lowered an effigy of Logan. Each effigy had a rope about its neck. But though all this pantomime was in plain. view of the audience there was no demonstration of regret or remonstrance-only grim silence.

Since early morning the weather had been threatening and now the rain fell in torrents-a tempestuous summer deluge. It rapidly grew very dark, and in the windows of the houses facing the court house square, yellow lightsprimitive candles-began to gleam.

Then the wind intensified its fury, and the electrical storm became blinding and deafening. Flash after flash of lightning was followed by crash after crash of reverberating thunder-heavenly artillery-but no one moved.

The scene: The dauntless Logan, the man with a bowieknife between his teeth, the horde of ruffians grouped about the speaker's stand, the dark-browed, scowling, murderous multitude, was worthy of the pen and pencil of a Greek dramatist; while the tempest, the yellow, flickering lights, the flashing lightning and the crashing thunder, the wail and moan of giant oak and elm and maple almost uprooted, and the lowering furious heavens, raging and writhing as if in quest of universal, primeval vengeance, furnished a scenario beyond the ordering of human wealth and genius.

But none moved. Scarcely an umbrella was raised. In the tense strain even timid women had suddenly developed nerves of steel.

A distant shot was heard, a near-by scream, a wild driverless team dashed into the public square, tore off one of the front wheels of the wagon at the post office corner, turned and plunged down Roanoke Street, and disappeared as

though clothed with wings and sped by lightning-a materialized dream from the world of pagan mythology.

In the wild excitement, intensified by the blinding gloom and the roar of the elements, one of the plunging, careening horses seemed to be headless, and the other to exhale fireand that such was the case was currently reported for many

years.

It was, indeed, like a lurid scene from Eschylus, or one of the mysterious portents said to have presaged the downfall of the Roman empire, or a blood-curdling spectacle conjured by the fabled spectres of the angered air, warning, warning, WARNING-but no one stirred.

All eyes now were riveted on the fearless political gladiator who had risen to address them.

Here and there a man shot a furtive, nervous glance over the crowd as if expecting to see a hundred, perhaps a thousand revolvers leveled at the speaker's head and heart-and then the tumult.

For days the air had been sulphurous with dark hints, and even open declarations, that if Logan dared to show his face in New Richmond he would not be permitted to speak, and now was the time to act-but no one moved.

Silent as sculptured Fate, statuesque as hewn and graven marble, apparently unbreathing as the dusty throat of an abandoned sepulchre, the prejudice-crazed, soon to be madlyinfuriated, multi-bodied, uni-minded monster sat.

Hugh Grant and Freda Levering were present.

Presently the storm subsided and Logan, advancing to the front of the platform, began his address, an address destined to be renowned in the annals of forensic eloquence-for before the close of the day he had won hundreds of Egypt's brightest and noblest sons to the Union.

But now there was no omen of victory-naught but gan

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grened prejudice, maddened, maniacal, and driven to its last retreat.

"Fellow Citizens !"

Logan paused to note the effect. His long, black, straight, abundant Indian-like hair reached to his shoulders; his massive jet-black drooping mustache but half concealed his resolute mouth and leonine jaw; his raven-black eyes, keen as an eagle's, piercing as a javelin of light deflected from an Arab's scimetar, swept the audience fearlessly, defiantly; his voice, like the clarion call of a king's trumpeter, far-reaching, all-embracing, rang out without shadow or suspicion of trembling or timidity.

So Jove, or Thor, or Ajax, or Hercules might have stood, dared, thundered, hurled defiance, by his very mien smitten his enemies with terror or aroused his followers to deeds of fiendish fury and destruction. Swarthy, agile, intrepid, arrayed in a Major-General's uniform, there was about him the air of mastery, of a tremendously vital personality, of a regnant indomitable spirit. In ancient times, the worthwhile days of Greece and Rome, he would have been worshiped as a god.

Out of the death-like hush there came a hiss, keen, daggerlike, hurtling. Not often do men thus hiss, they cannot; for the keenness and piercingness are born of the hatred and fury that inspire it, and are always in exact proportion to the tenseness and terribleness of the potential hatred and fury; and now the sabre-like thrust of the hiss was all the more penetrating on account of the psycho-electrical storm in the air, and the tiptoeness and quiviveness of ominous fear and expectation.

Again the hiss slashed and slivered the silence, but none moved or looked around. Even Logan looked neither to right or left. While the second hiss was seething and tor

turing its way through the air he slowly and deliberately said:

"There are many breeds of reptiles"-giving the "i" the long sound. "When I was soldiering in Mexico we passed through a certain valley that fairly swarmed with a reptile, a cross between a scorpion and a tarantula, vile, vicious, hideous, terrible, with a peculiarly loathsome odor, and a damnably wicked hiss. Flatheads and blue-racers are common breeds. But this is a new kind of sibilance; but, believe me, I recognized it instantly. I have been hearing it down about Sardis, and Rapidan, and Eutopolis, and Minerva, and Cleopas, and Athens, ever since I was about to say ever since the Lincoln-Douglas debate; the Lincoln who is now, by the grace of God, and the sovereign will of a great liberty-loving, Union-adoring people, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. I say I instantly recognized the vile reptile that has just hissed twice. It is a damn Copperhead, the vilest, slimiest, damnablest beast or reptile ever vomited out of the bottomless pit of hell.”

Logan's eyes gleamed like coals of fire but his voice was intensely calm, and he made no gestures.

"Brave as a lion," Hugh whispered; Freda smiled and nodded.

Instantly there was a fierce, spasmodic clutching of revolvers and bowie-knives, but Logan went on without seeming to note the increased fury his audacious words were kindling.

Presently there came another hiss, long-drawn, insistently and increasingly insolent, and murderous-as of a rattlesnake when about to strike. Then a dozen, score, hundreds!

The speaker's voice was overborne by the tumult; and the mob, surging yet closer to the platform, formed an unescapable cordon about him. It now was evident that an