The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865-1900

ON the field of Appomattox General Lee was waiting the return of a courier. His handsome face was clouded by the deepening shadows of defeat. Rumours of surrender had spread lik...

WHEN General Worth received Gaston’s brief and startling letter, the wires were hot between New York and Asheville for hours. His last message was a peremptory command to his da...

THE excitement through which Tom Camp had passed in the death of his daughter, and the stirring events connected with it, had been more than his feeble body could endure. He had...

“They’re all crazy. They swear they are going to have the United States establish a Sub-Treasury in Raleigh and issue Government script they can use as money on their pumpkins,...

WHEN Gaston tried to sleep, he found it impossible. His brain was on fire, every nerve quivering with some new mysterious power and his imagination soaring on tireless wings. He...

BEFORE boarding the train he was to take for Raleigh, he lingered with Mrs. Durham talking, talking, talking about the wonder of his love. As he arose to leave he said, “Now, Mo...

IN the rear of Mrs. Gaston’s place, there stood in the midst of an orchard a log house of two rooms, with hallway between them. There was a mud-thatched wooden chimney at each e...

IT was the bluest Monday the Rev. John Durham ever remembered in his ministry. A long drought had parched the corn into twisted and stunted little stalks that looked as though t...

TWO months later General Worth, while busy rebuilding his mills at Independence, had served on him a summons to appear before the Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau at Hambright and...

When the wagon dashed up to the post-office that night it was fifteen minutes late. He was walking up and down the street on the opposite pavement along the square, keeping unde...

GASTON tried to wait in patience another week for a word from the woman he loved, and when the last mail came and brought no letter for him, he found himself face to face with t...

THREE weeks before Christmas Gaston began to dream of the visit he was to make to Independence to see Sallie Worth. How long it seemed since she had kissed him in the twilight o...

THE lynching at Hambright had stirred the whole nation into unusual indignant interest. It happened to be the climax of a series of such crimes committed in the South in rapid s...

“Say, I just as well tell you,” whispered the deacon bending close, “we are not going to allow you to stay down South. We’ll be down after you before long--just as well be packi...

IN the death of Mr. Lincoln, a group of radical politicians, hitherto suppressed, saw their supreme opportunity to obtain control of the nation in the crisis of an approaching P...

And then began his weary tramp in search of work. Day after day, week after week, he got the same answer--an emphatic refusal. The only thing open to a negro was a position as p...

He had the fighting temperament which Southern people demand in their leaders. With this temperament he combined the skill of subtle diplomatic tact. He had no moral scruples of...

WHILE Gaston and the men were carrying Flora and Tom to the house, another searching party was formed. There were no women and children among them, only grim-visaged silent men,...

THE success of the Ku Klux Klan was so complete, its organisers were dazed. Its appeal to the ignorance and superstition of the Negro at once reduced the race to obedience and o...

WHILE Mrs. Worth and Sallie were still in the North, the Rev. John Durham received a unanimous call to the pastorate of one of the most powerful Baptist churches in Boston, with...

“I try to but it chokes me,” he half whispered, glancing timidly up at her. “Let me call you Aunt Margaret, I always wanted an aunt and I think your name Margaret’s so sweet,” h...

THE new government was now in full swing and a saturnalia began. Amos Hogg was Governor, Simon Legree Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Tim Shelby leader of the majority on the...

The court house had not yet been transformed into the farce-tragedy hall where jail birds and drunken loafers were soon to sit on judge’s bench and in attorney’s chair instead o...

McLEOD knew from the day of that outburst which followed Gaston’s speech in the Democratic convention that no power on earth could save his ticket. To the world he put on a bold...

TWO days after McLeod and his bride reached Asheville on their wedding trip, General Worth received a letter which threw him into a paroxysm of rage. Sallie’s wedding had been f...

WHEN Gaston reached Hambright the following day, and whispered to his mother the good news, he hastened to tell his friend Tom Camp. The young man’s heart warmed toward the whit...

WHEN Gaston received her telegram in jail he was seated by a window looking out through the bars on Mt. Pisgah’s distant peak looming in grandeur amid a sea of smaller blue moun...

THE next day the Preacher had a call from Miss Susan Walker of Boston, whose liberality had built the new Negro school house and whose life and fortune was devoted to the educat...

McLEOD returned home to find his plans of political success in perfect order. The programme went through without a hitch. In spite of the most desperate efforts of the Democrats...

TO his dying day Gaston will never forget that ride to her home with Sallie Worth by his side. It was a perfect May day. The leaves on the trees were just grown and flashed in t...

ALMOST every problem of national life had been illumined and made more hopeful by the searchlight of war save one--the irrepressible conflict between the African and the Anglo-S...

“Gaston you’re a man of brains, and oratorical genius. I heard your speech in the last Democratic convention in Raleigh, and I don’t say it to flatter you, that was the greatest...

One relief the Cleveland administration had brought Hambright--a decent citizen in charge of the post-office. Dave Haley had given place to a Democrat and was now scheming and w...

WHEN Helen Lowell reached Boston from her visit with Sallie Worth, she found her father in the midst of his political campaign. The Hon. Everett Lowell was the representative of...

She was in an agony of suspense and uncertainty about her lover. Gaston’s letters had failed to reach her for a month by reason of the war which had demoralised the mail service...

THE following Saturday the Rev. John Durham preached at a cross roads school house in the woods about ten miles from Hambright. He preached every Saturday in the year at such a...

HE was on the train at last homeward bound. Gazing out of the window of the car he was trying to find where he stood. He must be in love. He faced the remarkable fact that he ha...

“Who is it now. Auntie, another divinity with which you are going to overwhelm me?” asked Gaston smiling as he laid his book down and leaned back in his chair.

HAMBRIGHT had changed but little in the eighteen years of peace that had followed the terrors of Legree’s régime. The population had doubled, though but few houses had been buil...

IN the village of Hambright the church was the centre of gravity of the life of the people. There were but two churches, the Baptist and the Methodist. The Episcopalians had a b...

MRS. GASTON’S recovery from the brain fever which followed her prostration was slow and painful. For days she would be quite herself as she would sit up in bed and smile at the...

GASTON awoke next morning at half past ten o’clock with a dull headache, and a sense of hopeless depression. His anger had cooled and left him the pitiful consciousness of his l...

WHEN Gaston reached his home that night St. Clare had gone to bed. It was one o’clock. He could not sleep yet, so he sat in the window and tried to realise his great happiness,...

THE spirit of anarchy was in the tainted air. The bonds that held society were loosened. Government threatened to become organised crime instead of the organised virtue of the c...

ANOTHER year of struggle and suffering, hope and fear, Gaston had passed, and still he was no nearer the dream of realised love. If anything had changed, the General’s pride had...

Ezra Perkins the agent of the Freedman’s Bureau issued a windy proclamation to the new citizens to come forward on a certain day to register and receive their ‘elective franchise.’

THE overwhelming defeat of their pets in the South, and the toppling of their houses of paper built on Negro supremacy, brought to Congress a sense of guilt and shame, that requ...

NELSE was informed by the Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau when summoned before that tribunal that he must pay a fee of one dollar for a marriage license and be married over again.

Here, when a boy he had heard the great debate between Zebulon B. Vance and Judge Thomas Settle in the fierce campaign which followed the overthrow of Le-gree when the Republica...

HE was at home now, waiting impatiently for the General’s answer to his letter. Two weeks had passed and he had not received it. But she had explained in her letters that her fa...

AS Gaston left the Preacher, the Rev. Ephraim Fox approached. He was the pastor of the Negro Baptist church, and had succeeded old Uncle Josh at his death ten years before.

ON the second day after Mrs. Gaston was stricken a forlorn little boy sat in the kitchen watching Aunt Eve get supper. He saw her nod while she worked the dough for the biscuits.

THE summer of 1867! Will ever a Southern man or woman who saw it forget its scenes? A group of oath-bound secret societies, The Union League, The Heroes of America, and The Red...

“Darling, I was scared out of my wits. We got crossways on some questions we were discussing, and he snorted at me once, and every time I tried to screw up my courage to speak,...

Beyond all doubt, within his own memory, since the negroes under Legree’s lead had drawn the colour line in politics, the races had been drifting steadily apart. The gulf was no...

EVERY morning before the Preacher could finish his breakfast, callers were knocking at the door--the negro, the poor white, the widow, the orphan, the wounded, the hungry, an en...

MRS. WORTH had arrived in Boston a few days after Sallie, coming direct by rail. She was still very weak from her recent attack, and it cut her to the heart to watch Sallie writ...

THAT night as he walked back through the streets he was thrilled with a sense of strength and of triumph. He knew his ground now. There was to be war between him and the General...

APPARENTLY McLeod’s triumph was complete and permanent. The farmers were disappointed in their wild hopes of a sub-treasury, and other socialistic schemes, but the passions of t...

“‘Now, my love, we are in an awful situation. What are we to do with the General storming around preparing for a grand wedding? What if that jailer gives out the news? McLeod ca...

WHEN Charlie Gaston reached his home after a never-to-be-forgotten day in the woods with the Preacher, he found a ragged little dirt-smeared negro boy peeping through the fence...

TWO days after McLeod’s flight from Hambright the press despatches flashed from New York a startling two-column account of the attempted assassination of the Hon. Allan McLeod,...

NELSE was elated over the defeat and dissolution of the Leagues that had persecuted him with such malignant hatred. When the news of the election came he was still in bed suffer...