dling wood!"

Quick as a flash of lightning the paling suddenly left the fence and broke
three times in such bewildering rapidity on the negro's head he forgot
everything he ever knew or thought he knew save one thing--the way to run.
He didn't fly, but he made remarkable use of the facilities with which he
had been endowed.

Ben watched him disappear toward the camp.

He picked up the pieces of paling, pulled a strand of black wool from a
splinter, looked at it curiously and said:

"A sprig of his majesty's hair--I'll doubtless remember him without it!"

CHAPTER IV

AT THE POINT OF THE BAYONET

Within an hour from Ben's encounter he was arrested without warrant by the
military commandant, handcuffed, and placed on the train for Columbia,
more than a hundred miles distant. The first purpose of sending him in
charge of a negro guard was abandoned for fear of a riot. A squad of white
troops accompanied him.

Elsie was waiting at the gate, watching for his coming, her heart aglow
with happiness.

When Marion and little Hugh ran to tell the exciting news, she thought it
a joke and refused to believe it.

"Come, dear, don't tease me; you know it's not true!"

"I wish I may die if 'tain't so!" Hugh solemnly declared. "He run Gus away
'cause he scared Aunt Margaret so. They come and put handcuffs on him and
took him to Columbia. I tell you Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt Margaret are
mad!"

Elsie called Phil and begged him to see what had happened.

When Phil reported Ben's arrest without a warrant, and the indignity to
which he had been subjected on the amazing charge of resisting military
authority, Elsie hurried with Marion and Hugh to the hotel to express her
indignation, and sent Phil to Columbia on the next train to fight for his
release.

By the use of a bribe Phil discovered that a special inquisition had been
hastily organized to procure perjured testimony against Ben on the charge
of complicity in the murder of a carpet-bag adventurer named Ashburn, who
had been killed at Columbia in a row in a disreputable resort. This murder
had occurred the week Ben Cameron was in Nashville. The enormous reward of
$25,000 had been offered for the conviction of any man who could be
implicated in the killing. Scores of venal wretches, eager for this blood
money, were using every device of military tyranny to secure evidence on
which to convict--no matter who the man might be. Within six hours of his
arrival th