Though evidently very glad to see them, she seemed, after the first few
moments, so depressed and anxious, that at length her sister remarked
it, and asked if there were any other cause than Daisy's illness.

"Yes, Rose," she said, "I must own that I am growing very timid in
regard to these Ku Klux outrages. Since they have taken to beating and
shooting whites as well as blacks, women as well as men, who shall say
that we are safe? I a Northern woman too and without a protector."

"I do not think they will molest a lady of your standing," said Mr.
Dinsmore, "the widow too of a Confederate officer. But where is Boyd,
that you say you are without a protector?"

A slight shudder ran over Sophie's frame. "Boyd?" she said, drawing her
chair nearer and speaking in an undertone, "he is my great dread, and
for fear of wounding mother's feelings I have had to keep my terrors to
myself. I know that he is often out, away from the plantation, all
night. I have for weeks past suspected that he was a Ku Klux, and last
night, or rather early this morning, my suspicions were so fully
confirmed that they now amount almost to certainty. I had been up all
night with Daisy, and a little before sunrise happening to be at the
window, I saw him stealing into the house with a bundle under his
arm,--something white rolled up in the careless sort of way a man would
do it."

"I am not surprised," said Mr. Dinsmore, "he is just the sort of man one
would expect to be at such work,--headstrong, violent tempered, and
utterly selfish and unscrupulous. Yet I think you may dismiss your fears
of him, and feel it rather a safeguard than otherwise to have a member
of the Klan in your family."