“You will retain your place, Jerry,” he said severely, “so long as you perform your duties to my satisfaction and behave yourself properly.”

With this grandiloquent subterfuge Carteret turned to his next article on white supremacy.  Jerry did not delude himself with any fine-spun sophistry.  He knew perfectly well that he held his job upon the condition that he stayed away from the polls at the approaching election.  Jerry was a fool—­

“The world of fools hath such a store,
  That he who would not see an ass,
Must stay at home and shut his door
  And break his looking-glass.”

But while no one may be entirely wise, there are degrees of folly, and
Jerry was not all kinds of a fool.

XXIX

MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM

Events moved rapidly during the next few days.  The reproduction, in the Chronicle, of the article from the Afro-American Banner, with Carteret’s inflammatory comment, took immediate effect.  It touched the Southern white man in his most sensitive spot.  To him such an article was an insult to white womanhood, and must be resented by some active steps,—­mere words would be no answer at all.  To meet words with words upon such a subject would be to acknowledge the equality of the negro and his right to discuss or criticise the conduct of the white people.

The colored people became alarmed at the murmurings of the whites, which seemed to presage a coming storm.  A number of them sought to arm themselves, but ascertained, upon inquiring at the stores, that no white merchant would sell a negro firearms.  Since all the dealers in this sort of merchandise were white men, the negroes had to be satisfied with oiling up the old army muskets which some of them possessed, and the few revolvers with which a small rowdy element generally managed to keep themselves supplied.  Upon an effort being made to purchase firearms from a Northern city, the express company, controlled by local men, refused to accept the consignment.  The white people, on the other hand, procured both arms and ammunition in large quantities, and the Wellington Grays drilled with great assiduity at their armory.

All this went on without any public disturbance of the town’s tranquillity.  A stranger would have seen nothing to excite his curiosity.  The white people did their talking among themselves, and merely grew more distant in their manner toward the colored folks, who instinctively closed their ranks as the whites drew away.  With each day that passed the feeling grew more tense.  The editor of the Afro-American Banner, whose office had been quietly garrisoned for several nights by armed negroes, became frightened, and disappeared from the town between two suns.

The conspirators were jubilant at the complete success of their plans.  It only remained for them to so direct this aroused public feeling that it might completely accomplish the desired end,—­to change the political complexion of the city government and assure the ascendency of the whites until the amendment should go into effect.  A revolution, and not a riot, was contemplated.