A gleam of intelligence lighted up little Elsie’s face.  “Oh!  I understand it now,” she said, with a low silvery laugh; “cousin is a ventriloquist.”

“What’s that?” asked Vi.

“Oh I know!” cried Eddie.  “Cousin Ronald, don’t you have a great deal of fun doing it?”

“Well, my boy, perhaps rather more than I ought, seeing it’s very apt to be at other folks’ expense.”

The guest, mamma and Elsie having been helped, it was now Vi’s turn to claim papa’s attention.

“What shall I send you, daughter?” he asked.

“Oh nothing, papa, please! no, no, I can’t eat live things,” she said half shuddering.

“It is not alive my child.”

Violet looked utterly bewildered:  she had never known her father to say anything that was not perfectly true, yet how could she disbelieve the evidence of her own senses?

“Papa, could it hollow so loud when it was dead?” she asked deprecatingly.

“It did not, my little darling; ’twas I,” said Cousin Ronald, preventing papa’s reply, “the chick seemed to make the noise but it was really I.”

Papa and mamma both confirmed this statement and the puzzled child consented to partake of the mysterious fowl.

Minna, standing with her basket of keys at the back of her mistress’s chair, Tom and Prilla, waiting on the table, had been as much startled and mystified by the chicken’s sudden outcry as Vi herself, and seized with superstitious fears, turned almost pale with terror.

Mr. Lilburn’s assertion and the concurrent assurance of their master and mistress, relieved their fright; but they were still full of astonishment, and gazed at the guest with wonder and awe.

Of course the story was told in the kitchen and created much curiosity and excitement there.

This excitement was, however, soon lost in a greater when the news of the expected attack from the Ku Klux circulated among them an hour or two later.

It could not be kept from the children, but they were calmed and soothed by mamma’s assurance, “God will take care of us, my darlings, and help papa, grandpa and the rest to drive the bad men away.”

“Mamma,” said Vi, “we little ones can’t fight, but if we pray a good deal to God, will that help?”

“Yes, daughter, for the Bible tells us God is the hearer and answerer of prayer.”

Elsie herself seemed entirely free from agitation and alarm; full of hope and courage, she inspired those about her with the same feelings; the domestic machinery moved on in its usual quiet, regular fashion.

The kitchen department it is true, was the scene of much earnest talk, but the words were spoken with bated breath, and many an anxious glance from door and window, as if the speakers feared the vicinity of some lurking foe.

Aunt Dicey was overseeing the making of a huge kettle of soft soap.

“Tears like dis yer’s a long time a comin’,” she said, giving the liquid a vigorous stir, then lifting her paddle and holding it over the kettle to see if it dripped off in the desired ropy condition; “but dere, dis ole sinnah no business growlin’ ’bout dat; yah! yah!” and dropping the paddle, she put her hands on her hips, rolled up her eyes and fairly shook with half suppressed laughter.