trouble was eighteen miles from Burleigh, but it was chosen by the negroes as their rendezvous. We knew nothing of the trouble. But the white men of the neighborhood heard that they were preparing for a fight, and about fifty of them marched to the plantation to meet the negroes. Wild rumors were afloat, among others, that not a "white face" was to be spared! Our first intimation of the riot was to hear about one hundred rifles go off in the park, followed by loud cries and yells and battle orders. And presently a riderless horse or two, one shot through the body and dying, rushed past the gate. This was all. After that one volley the negroes fled. The carpet-bagger who had urged them to this riot had gotten to a place of safety before the fight came off. Four negroes were killed and two white men wounded. About fifty negroes had been in the engagement.
Our cook clung to me as I went in the kitchen.
"Oh, they have killed Robert! Oh, he say all de time dat he warn't goin' to hurt his white people I He say all de time dat he b'long to you."
The negro men on the plantation disappeared, as has been said, and did not come back for weeks. The women came to the house; the hall was quite full of them, and we could not persuade them to go home all that day. Mammy Maria got under the chair on which one of "her white children" sat, and embraces and pattings on the back and all the affectionate words that could be thought of were needed to get her up from the floor, where she was crying bitterly. All this had taken place just as we were about to go in to breakfast, on a lovely morning in October. In a short time a body of one hundred and fifty men from Crystal Springs rode up. They had ridden from there, a distance of sixteen miles, under whip and spur, and were so covered with dust as to be almost unrecognizable.
Our cook had gone to her dying husband, and these men had had no breakfast. Thomas opened-the store-room to them; several of the more experienced were soon engaged in cooking for the company. For a week the country was in a state of apprehension, and
