For a dread sound it was indeed. I do not know that I had ever heard it before—certainly not more than once, and then when but a child—but it had the awful note that can be best described as the baying of furious and avenging men. The Southern heart, I fancy, would recognize it anywhere, just as a huntsman's child would know the far-off voice of hounds. I have heard many sounds since then, sounds that might well strike terror to the stoutest heart, but none so fraught with the savage omen of death and doom as the voice of strong and noble men when they are maddened with revengeful hate and aflame with thirst for blood.

Gordon was already hurrying. "Good heavens," I heard him murmur as we turned a sudden jog in the road, "what a furious scene! They're mad, Helen, they're mad," he cried as we hurried closer; "what on earth means this?—look, they've got a halter round the wretch's neck."

"Take me home," I said faintly, pointing towards the house, now but a few yards from us.

"What does it mean, I say?" he repeated huskily, pressing on as though he did not hear.

"It means death," I faltered; "they're going to kill him—— Oh! take me home," as I clutched his arm and staggered half fainting towards the door.

XIII
THE LYNCHING

Needless to say the household was astir. For our house had a fatal location—at least, so it proved that night—standing as it did in a quiet part of the town close to the long bridge that spanned the river. And the crowd was making for the bridge; this was to serve as a scaffold.

Uncle was not at home. He had gone forth about midnight, as my aunt told me. A few minutes later he returned, but only for a moment, to explain the cause of his absence, and to tell them not to expect him till they saw him. His eyes were bloodshot, my mother said, and his lips were dry. Yet uncle was the most peaceable of men—but this one thing seems to make savages out of the mildest of Southern gentlemen. It was the old story; this wretched negro had assaulted a woman on the street, a poor ignorant white girl who had been sitting up with a sick friend, and who thought she could slip unattended across the couple of blocks that separated her from her home. He had dragged her into an alley—but God sent somebody.

None of these infuriated men—and they comprised the flower of our population, many of them men of wealth and culture—had ever heard of the woman upon whom the black had attempted violence. But this mattered not—had she been the beauty of the city, or the belle of the South itself, their fury could not have been greater. She was white; he was black—that was enough, esteemed by them as a warrant from God Himself. For no thought of the right or wrong of their deadly zeal ever took possession of their minds. No knight of the middle ages was ever more sincere in the ardour that gave the Crusades their glory. If ever men believed they were doing God service, they were these hot-hearted men who hurried their trembling sacrifice onward to the bridge.