talk that way before niggers and set them against the white people
either, I suppose?"

The chairman burst into a hearty laugh, as he replied,

"No, indeed, I don't. If you call that setting the blacks against
the whites, the sooner they are by the ears the better. If you
are so thin-skinned that you can't allow a colored man to think,
talk, act, and prosper like a man, the sooner you get over your
squeamishness the better. For me, I am interested in this Nimbus.
We have to go to Red Wing and report on it as a place for holding
a poll and I am bound to see more of him."

"Oh, you'll see enough of him if you go there, never fear," was
the reply.

There was a laugh from the white men about the sheriff, a sort
of cheer from the colored men in waiting, and the business of the
board went on without further reference to the new-made citizen.

The slave who had been transformed into a "contraband" and
mustered as a soldier under one name, married under another, and
now enfranchised under a third, returned to his home to meditate
upon his transformations--as we found him doing in our first chapter.

The reason for these metamorphoses, and their consequences, might
well puzzle a wiser head than that of the many-named but unlettered
Nimbus.