Ah! he knew now. It was the searchers returning, a grim swaying voiceless mob with one black figure amid them. They were swarming into the court house square under the big oak where an informal trial was to be held.
He rushed forward to protest against a lynching. He could just catch a glimpse of the negro’s head swaying back and forth, protesting innocence in a singing monotone as though he were already half dead.
He pushed his way roughly through the excited crowd, to the centre where Hose Norman, the leader, stood with one end of a rope in his hand and the other around the negro’s neck.
The negro turned his head quickly toward the movement made by the crowd as Gaston pressed forward.
It was Dick!
Dick recognised him at the same moment, leaped toward him and fell at his feet crying and pleading as he held his feet and legs.
“Save me, Charlie! I nebber done it! I nebber done it! For God’s sake help me! Keep ’em off! Dey gwine burn me erlive!”
Gaston turned to the crowd. “Men, there’s not one among you that loved that old soldier and his girl as I did. But you must not do this crime. If this negro is guilty, we can prove it in that court house there, and he will pay the penalty with his life. Give him a fair trial”—
“That’s a lawyer talkin’ now!” said a man in the crowd. “We know that tune. The lawyers has things their own way in a court house.” A murmur of assent mingled with oaths ran through the crowd.
“Fair trial!” sneered Hose Norman snatching Dick from the ground by the rope. “Look at the black devil’s clothes splotched all over with her blood. We found him under a shelvin’ rock where he’d got by wadin’ up the branch a quarter of a mile to fool the dogs. We found his track in the sand some places where he missed the water and tracked him clear from where we found Flora to the cave he was lying in. Fair trial—hell! We’re just waitin’ for er can o’ oil. You go back and read your law books—we ’ll tend ter this devil.”