was
an ideal which even the colonel's waking hours would not have
repudiated.

Following this pleasing thread with the unconscious rapidity of
dreams, the colonel passed, in a few brief minutes, through a long and
useful life to a happy end, when he too rested with his fathers, by
the side of his son, and on his tomb was graven what was said of Ben
Adhem: "Here lies one who loved his fellow men," and the further
words, "and tried to make them happy."

* * * * *

Shortly after dawn there was a loud rapping at the colonel's door:

"Come downstairs and look on de piazza, Colonel," said the agitated
voice of the servant who had knocked. "Come quick, suh."

There was a vague terror in the man's voice that stirred the colonel
strangely. He threw on a dressing gown and hastened downstairs, and to
the front door of the hall, which stood open. A handsome mahogany
burial casket, stained with earth and disfigured by rough handling,
rested upon the floor of the piazza, where it had been deposited
during the night. Conspicuously nailed to the coffin lid was a sheet
of white paper, upon which were some lines rudely scrawled in a
handwriting that matched the spelling:

_Kurnell French_:

_Take notis. Berry yore ole nigger somewhar else. He can't stay
in Oak Semitury. The majority of the white people of this town,
who dident tend yore nigger funarl, woant have him there.
Niggers by there selves, white peepul by there selves, and them
that lives in our town must bide by our rules._

_By order of_
CUMITTY.

The colonel left the coffin standing on the porch, where it remained
all day, an object of curious interest to the scores and hundreds who
walked by to look at it, for the news spread quickly through the town.
No one, however, came in. If there were those who reprobated the
action they were silent. The mob spirit, which had broken out in the
lynching of Johnson, still dominated the town, and no one dared to
speak against it.

As soon as Colonel French had dressed and breakfasted, he drove over
to the cemetery. Those who had exhumed old Peter's remains had not
been unduly careful. The carelessly excavated earth had been scattered
here and there over the lot. The flowers on old Peter's grave and that
of little Phil had been trampled under foot--whether wantonly or not,
inevitably, in