“Doan you believe I gwine die! I gwine ter git eben wid dem niggers ’fore I leab dis worl’.”
Nelse spoke feebly, but there was a way about his saying it that boded no good to his enemies, and Eve was silent. As Nelse improved, Eve’s wrath steadily rose.
The next day she met in the street one of the negroes who had threatened Nelse.
“How’s Mistah Gaston dis mawnin’ M’am?” he asked.
Without a word of warning she sprang on him like a tigress, bore him to the ground, grasped him by the throat and pounded his head against a stone. She would have choked him to death, had not a man who was passing come to the rescue.
“Lemme lone, man, I’se doin’ de wuk er God!”
“You’re committing murder, woman.”
When the negro got up he jumped the fence and tore down through a corn field, as though pursued by a hundred devils, now and then glancing over his shoulder to see if Eve were after him.
The Preacher tried in vain to bring the perpetrators of this outrage on Nelse to justice. He identified six of them positively. They were arrested, and when put on trial immediately discharged by the judge who was himself a member of the League that had ordered Nelse whipped.