There lay upon his desk a letter from a well-known promoter, offering the major an investment which promised large returns, though several years must elapse before the enterprise could be put upon a paying basis.  The element of time, however, was not immediately important.  The Morning Chronicle provided him an ample income.  The money available for this investment was part of his wife’s patrimony.  It was invested in a local cotton mill, which was paying ten per cent., but this was a beggarly return compared with the immense profits promised by the offered investment,—­profits which would enable his son, upon reaching manhood, to take a place in the world commensurate with the dignity of his ancestors, one of whom, only a few generations removed, had owned an estate of ninety thousand acres of land and six thousand slaves.

This letter having been disposed of by an answer accepting the offer, the major took up his pen to write an editorial.  Public affairs in the state were not going to his satisfaction.  At the last state election his own party, after an almost unbroken rule of twenty years, had been defeated by the so-called “Fusion” ticket, a combination of Republicans and Populists.  A clean sweep had been made of the offices in the state, which were now filled by new men.  Many of the smaller places had gone to colored men, their people having voted almost solidly for the Fusion ticket.  In spite of the fact that the population of Wellington was two thirds colored, this state of things was gall and wormwood to the defeated party, of which the Morning Chronicle was the acknowledged organ.  Major Carteret shared this feeling.  Only this very morning, while passing the city hall, on his way to the office, he had seen the steps of that noble building disfigured by a fringe of job-hunting negroes, for all the world—­to use a local simile—­like a string of buzzards sitting on a rail, awaiting their opportunity to batten upon the helpless corpse of a moribund city.

Taking for his theme the unfitness of the negro to participate in government,—­an unfitness due to his limited education, his lack of experience, his criminal tendencies, and more especially to his hopeless mental and physical inferiority to the white race,—­the major had demonstrated, it seemed to him clearly enough, that the ballot in the hands of the negro was a menace to the commonwealth.  He had argued, with entire conviction, that the white and black races could never attain social and political harmony by commingling their blood; he had proved by several historical parallels that no two unassimilable races could ever live together except in the relation of superior and inferior; and he was just dipping his gold pen into the ink to indite his conclusions from the premises thus established, when Jerry, the porter, announced two visitors.

“Gin’l Belmont an’ Cap’n McBane would like ter see you, suh.”

“Show them in, Jerry.”

The man who entered first upon this invitation was a dapper little gentleman with light-blue eyes and a Vandyke beard.  He wore a frock coat, patent leather shoes, and a Panama hat.  There were crow’s-feet about his eyes, which twinkled with a hard and, at times, humorous shrewdness.  He had sloping shoulders, small hands and feet, and walked with the leisurely step characteristic of those who have been reared under hot suns.