“About eight o’clock this morning,” said the woman. “She started to go over to our next door neighbor here, Mr. Edmonds, and this negro met her. We didn’t know anything about it until she came crying through the gate and dropped down in here.”
“Were you the first one to meet her?” asked Davies.
“Yes, I was the only one,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “The men had all gone to the fields.”
Davies listened to more of the details, the type and history of the man, and then rose to go. Before doing so he was allowed to have a look at the girl, who was still sleeping. She was young and rather pretty. In the yard he met a country man who was just coming to get home news. The latter imparted more information.
“They’re lookin’ all around south of here,” he said, speaking of a crowd which was supposed to be searching. “I expect they’ll make short work of him if they get him. He can’t get away very well, for he’s on foot, wherever he is. The sheriff’s after him too, with a deputy or two, I believe. He’ll be tryin’ to save him an’ take him over to Clayton, but I don’t believe he’ll be able to do it, not if the crowd catches him first.”
So, thought Davies, he would probably have to witness a lynching after all. The prospect was most unhappy.
“Does any one know where this negro lived?” he asked heavily, a growing sense of his duty weighing upon him.
“Oh, right down here a little way,” replied the farmer. “Jeff Ingalls was his name. We all know him around here. He worked for one and another of the farmers hereabouts, and don’t appear to have had such a bad record, either, except for drinkin’ a little now and then. Miss Ada recognized him, all right. You follow this road to the next crossing and turn to the right. It’s a little log house that sets back off the road—something like that one you see down the lane there, only it’s got lots o’ chips scattered about.”
Davies decided to go there first, but changed his mind. It was growing late, and he thought he had better return to the village. Perhaps by now developments in connection with the sheriff or the posse were to be learned.
Accordingly, he rode back and put the horse in the hands of its owner, hoping that all had been concluded and that he might learn of it here. At the principal corner much the same company was still present, arguing, fomenting, gesticulating. They seemed parts of different companies that earlier in the day had been out searching. He wondered what they had been doing since, and then decided to ingratiate himself by telling them he had just come from the Whitakers and what he had learned there of the present condition of the girl and the movements of the sheriff.