"My Dear Norfleet: I am in the throes of an overwhelming sorrow. My Alene has been foully murdered. A mystery surrounds the case. We cannot fathom the motive of the crime. To-day (rather yesterday now, for it is two o'clock in the morning) a man accused of murdering her was lynched. To-night the man who was supposed to have been lynched made his appearance at his home. But the mother sticks to it that the real murderer, her son, is the corpse, and appearances seem to bear out the contention. Now it may be that Alene's murderer is yet alive and that an injustice has been wrought upon somebody. My heart is more firmly knit to my Southern white brethren than ever before. I fling ambition to the winds. Tell my friends that I shall not make the race for Congress, and thank them for me for the way in which they have always seconded my aspirations. It pains me much to not be in a position to attempt to scale the heights which their loving hearts fancied I could make with ease. I shall walk with my kith and kin of the South in the shadow, for in the furnace of a common sorrow, my heart has been melted into one with theirs. We of the South (you see I call myself one of them), know not what the future has in store for our beloved section, but we face the ordeal with the grim determination of our race. If you believe in prayer, pray that I may be just and may even in darkness do the right.
"Ramon, 'The Mad.'"
When Alene had been laid to rest, Ramon, after lingering in Almaville for a few weeks, disappeared completely, leaving behind no trace of himself. He had previously given Mr. Daleman and friends assurances that he would do no violence to himself. So while they knew not where he was nor what was his mission, they were not unduly apprehensive as to his welfare.
Ramon Mansford had simply stained himself a chocolate brown and had thus passed from the Anglo-Saxon to the Negro race. He had gone to fathom the mystery of Alene's murder.
CHAPTER XVII.
Peculiar Divorce Proceedings.
"Dilsy Brooks, would you 'low me er few wurds wid you?"
Dilsy Harper, Bud's mother, paused in her knitting, pulled her spectacles a little further down on her nose, and peered over them at Silas Harper, her husband, who had just entered her room and stood with his hat in his hand. He was low of stature, small and very bow-legged. A short white beard graced his chin, while his upper lip was kept clean shaven. His head was covered with the proverbial knotty, wool-like hair, which was now the scene of a struggle for the mastery between the black and gray. Since the moment that the news was brought to him that Bud was accused of Alene's murder he had been acting rather queerly, even after all things were taken into consideration, thought Mrs. Harper.