Miller recognized several others
of the party, who made not the slightest attempt at disguise, though no
names were called by any one.
"Where are you going?" demanded the leader.
"I am looking for my wife and child," replied Miller.
"Well, run along, and keep them out of the streets when you find them;
and keep your hands out of this affair, if you wish to live in this
town, which from now on will be a white man's town, as you niggers will
be pretty firmly convinced before night."
Miller drove on as swiftly as might be. At the next corner he was
stopped again. In the white man who held him up, Miller recognized a
neighbor of his own. After a short detention and a perfunctory search,
the white man remarked apologetically:--
"Sorry to have had to trouble you, doctuh, but them's the o'ders. It
ain't men like you that we're after, but the vicious and criminal class
of niggers."
Miller smiled bitterly as he urged his horse forward. He was quite well
aware that the virtuous citizen who had stopped him had only a few weeks
before finished a term in the penitentiary, to which he had been
sentenced for stealing. Miller knew that he could have bought all the
man owned for fifty dollars, and his soul for as much more.
A few rods farther on, he came near running over the body of a wounded
man who lay groaning by the wayside. Every professional instinct urged
him to stop and offer aid to the sufferer; but the uncertainty
concerning his wife and child proved a stronger motive and urged him
resistlessly forward.
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