"Burn her up!" said one.
"You are a coward. The gal ain't no rat. Give her a chance, fool," replied another.
"Who calls me a fool?" shouted the first speaker. "I will kill the scoundrel," he added.
A wrangle here broke out and a free for all fight was threatened, some favoring one of the disputants and some the other. While they were engaged in this drunken squabble, one of their number had gotten into the kitchen and had saturated the floor with kerosene oil. He then set fire to the building.
Beulah heard the roaring flames and decided to make a bold dash for life. She was a country girl, vigorous of frame and fleet of foot and hoped to outrun the crowd in their drunken condition. Quietly unpinning the barred door, she leaped out and began to run. She chose the side of the house opposite to the one where she heard the noise, and supposed that at least a short interval would intervene before the crowd discovered that she had escaped.
But the young man who had set the house on fire had gone to that side of the house in anticipation of an attempt to escape. When he saw Beulah run forth from the building, he uttered a yell and with great effort of will steadied himself sufficiently to hurl at the fleeing girl a stick of stove wood which he had gotten in the kitchen. The stick struck her on the back of her head. Beulah fell forward and in a few minutes breathed her last. When the Negroes returned from church, they found the ashes of the house and, a short distance away, Beulah lying on her face in a puddle of blood. The perpetrators of the crime had fled.
