If he complied, he was searched, more or less roughly, for
firearms, and then warned to get off the street. When he met another
group of white men the scene was repeated. The man thus summarily held
up seldom encountered more than two groups before disappearing across
lots to his own home or some convenient hiding-place. If he resisted any
demand of those who halted him--But the records of the day are
historical; they may be found in the newspapers of the following date,
but they are more firmly engraved upon the hearts and memories of the
people of Wellington. For many months there were negro families in the
town whose children screamed with fear and ran to their mothers for
protection at the mere sight of a white man.
Dr. Miller had received a call, about one o'clock, to attend a case at
the house of a well-to-do colored farmer, who lived some three or four
miles from the town, upon the very road, by the way, along which Miller
had driven so furiously a few weeks before, in the few hours that
intervened before Sandy Campbell would probably have been burned at the
stake. The drive to his patient's home, the necessary inquiries, the
filling of the prescription from his own medicine-case, which he carried
along with him, the little friendly conversation about the weather and
the crops, and, the farmer being an intelligent and thinking man, the
inevitable subject of the future of their race,--these, added to the
return journey, occupied at least two hours of Miller's time.
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