the chicken was about, he
simply reached out one claw, took the rooster by the neck, planted the
other claw in his breast, and snatched his head off."

The old man snapped his massive jaws together and grunted contemptuously.

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Book III--The Reign of Terror

CHAPTER I

A FALLEN SLAVEHOLDER'S MANSION

Piedmont, South Carolina, which Elsie and Phil had selected for reasons
best known to themselves as the place of retreat for their father, was a
favourite summer resort of Charleston people before the war.

Ulster county, of which this village was the capital, bordered on the
North Carolina line, lying alongside the ancient shore of York. It was
settled by the Scotch folk who came from the North of Ireland in the great
migrations which gave America three hundred thousand people of Covenanter
martyr blood, the largest and most important addition to our population,
larger in number than either the Puritans of New England or the so-called
Cavaliers of Virginia and Eastern Carolina; and far more important than
either, in the growth of American nationality.

To a man they had hated Great Britain. Not a Tory was found among them.
The cries of their martyred dead were still ringing in their souls when
George III started on his career of oppression. The fiery words of Patrick
Henry, their spokesman in the valley of Virginia, had swept the
aristocracy of the Old Dominion into rebellion against the King and on
into triumphant Democracy. They had made North Carolina the first home of
freedom in the New World, issued the first Declaration of Independence in
Mecklenburg, and lifted the first banner of rebellion against the tyranny
of the Crown.

They grew to the soil wherever they stopped, always home lovers and home
builders, loyal to their own people, instinctive clan leaders and clan
followers. A sturdy, honest, covenant-keeping, God-fearing, fighting
people, above all things they hated sham and pretence. They never boasted
of their families, though some of them might have quartered the royal arms
of Scotland on their shields.

To these sturdy qualities had been added a strain of Huguenot tenderness
and vivacity.

The culture of cotton as the sole industry had fixed African slavery as
their economic system. With the heritage of the Old World had been blended
forces inherent in the earth and air of the new Southland, something of
the breath