
    The painful thing observable about all this business was, the alacrity with
which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own
class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel
that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the
natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste to side
with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire
into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping to hang
his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was
nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable
as evidence; still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about
it.
    This was depressing - to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It
reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the poor whites of our South
who were always despised, and frequently insulted, by the slave lords around
them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in
their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave lords in all
political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also
finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent
the destruction of that very institution which degraded them. And there was only
one redeeming feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that
was, that secretly the poor white did detest the slave lord, and did feel his
own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface, but the fact that it was
there and could have been brought out, under favoring circumstances, was
something - in fact it was enough; for it showed that a man is at bottom a man,
after all, even if it doesn't show on the outside.
    Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of the
Southern poor white of the far future. The king presently showed impatience, and
said:
    »An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye the
criminals will abide in their father's house? They are fleeing, they are not
waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse be set upon their track.«
    The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked
flustered and irresolute. I said:
    »Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which
direction I think they would try to take
