The Spectre In The Cart | Page 2

of pilfering, and I had once or twice defended
him for stealing and gotten him off, and he appeared to be grateful to

me. I always doubted him a little; for I believed he did not have force
of character enough to stand up against his people, and he was a
chronic liar. Still, he was always friendly with me, and used to claim
the emoluments and privileges of such a relation. Now, however, on a
sudden, in this campaign he became one of my bitterest opponents. I
attributed it to the influence of a son of his, named Absalom, who had
gone off from the county during the war when he was only a youth, and
had stayed away for many years without anything being known of him,
and had now returned unexpectedly. He threw himself into the fight. He
claimed to have been in the army, and he appeared to have a
deep-seated animosity against the whites, particularly against all those
whom he had known in boyhood. He was a vicious-looking fellow,
broad-shouldered and bow-legged, with a swagger in his gait. He had
an ugly scar on the side of his throat, evidently made by a knife, though
he told the negroes, I understood, that he had got it in the war, and was
ready to fight again if he but got the chance. He had not been back long
before he was in several rows, and as he was of brutal strength, he
began to be much feared by the negroes. Whenever I heard of him it
was in connection with some fight among his own people, or some
effort to excite race animosity. When the canvass began he flung
himself into it with fury, and I must say with marked effect.
"His hostility appeared to be particularly directed against myself, and I
heard of him in all parts of the district declaiming against me. The
negroes who, for one or two elections, had appeared to have quieted
down and become indifferent as to politics were suddenly revivified. It
looked as if the old scenes of the Reconstruction period, when the two
sides were like hostile armies, might be witnessed again. Night
meetings, or 'camp-fires,' were held all through the district, and from
many of them came the report of Absalom Turnell's violent speeches
stirring up the blacks and arraying them against the whites. Our side
was equally aroused and the whole section was in a ferment. Our effort
was to prevent any outbreak and tide over the crisis.
"Among my friends was a farmer named John Halloway, one of the
best men in my county, and a neighbor and friend of mine from my
boyhood. His farm, a snug little homestead of fifty or sixty acres,

adjoined our plantation on one side; and on the other, that of the Eatons,
to whom Joel Turnell and his son Absalom had belonged, and I
remember that as a boy it was my greatest privilege and reward to go
over on a Saturday and be allowed by John Halloway to help him
plough, or cut his hay. He was a big, ruddy-faced, jolly boy, and even
then used to tell me about being in love with Fanny Peel, who was the
daughter of another farmer in the neighborhood, and a Sunday-school
scholar of my mother's. I thought him the greatest man in the world. He
had a fight once with Absalom Turnell when they were both youngsters,
and, though Turnell was rather older and much the heavier, whipped
him completely. Halloway was a good soldier and a good son, and
when he came back from the war and won his wife, who was a belle
among the young farmers, and settled down with her on his little place,
which he proceeded to make a bower of roses and fruit-trees, there was
not a man in the neighborhood who did not rejoice in his prosperity and
wish him well. The Halloways had no children and, as is often the case
in such instances, they appeared to be more to each other than are most
husbands and wives. He always spoke of his wife as if the sun rose and
set in her. No matter where he might be in the county, when night came
he always rode home, saying that his wife would be expecting him.
'Don't keer whether she 's asleep or not,' he used to say to those who
bantered him, 'she knows I 'm a-comin', and she always hears my click
on the gate-latch, and is waitin' for me.'
"It came to be well understood throughout the county.
"'I believe you are hen-pecked,' said a man to him one night.
"'I believe I am, George,' laughed Hallo-way, 'and by Jings! I like it,
too.'
"It was impossible to take