"Gimme er bottle and two er dem pictures!" bawled another candidate for a mule.
The peddler handed him the bottle and the pictures and threw a handful of his labels among the crowd. These labels happened to be just the size of the ballots, having on them the picture of a dead rat lying on his back, and, above, the emblem of death, the cross-bones and skull.
"Forty acres and a mule for every black man—why was I ever born white? I never had no luck, nohow!"
Phil and Ben passed on nearer the polling-place, around which stood a cordon of soldiers with a line of negro voters two hundred yards in length extending back into the crowd.
The negro Leagues came in armed battallions and voted in droves, carrying their muskets in their hands. Less than a dozen white men were to be seen about the place.
The negroes, under the drill of the League and the Freedman's Bureau, protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves, disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new constitution, and elect a legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House, chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the voters outside the booth as well as inside. He appeared to be omnipresent, and his self-importance was a sight Phil had never dreamed. He could not keep his eyes off him.
"By George, Cameron, he's a wonder!" he laughed.
Aleck had suppressed as far as possible the story of the painted stakes and the deed, after sending out warnings to the brethren to beware of two enticing strangers. The surveyors had reaped a rich harvest and passed on. Aleck
