And yet by ten o'clock that morning even these tongues were silenced, for news strange and startling began to steal in from the mountains. The party who had been in pursuit of the desperado Sam Dudlow had overtaken him—found him hiding in a bam, covered with hay. He was unarmed and made no resistance, laughing as if the whole thing were a joke. He frankly told them that he would have given himself up earlier, but he had hoped to live long enough to get even with the other leader of the mob that had whipped him at Darley, a certain Dan Willis. He confessed in detail exactly how he had murdered the Johnsons and that he had done it alone. Pete Warren was in no way implicated in it. The lynchers, to get the whole truth, threatened him; they tortured him; they tied him to a tree and piled pine fagots about him, but he still stuck to his statement, and when they had mercifully riddled him with bullets, just as his clothing was igniting, they left him hanging by the road-side, a grewsome scarecrow as a warning to his kind, and, led by Jabe Parsons, they made all haste to reach the faction on Pete Warren's track to tell them that the boy was innocent.
Jabe Parsons, carrying a load on his mind, remembering his wife's valiant stand in behalf of the younger accused, rode faster than his tired fellows, and near his own farm met the lynchers returning from Darley. “Too late,” they told him, in response to his news, the Hillbend boys had done away with the Darley jailbird and mysteriously hidden the body to inspire fear among the negroes.
At Darley consternation swept the place as story after story of Aunt Linda's prostration passed from house to house. “Poor, faithful old woman! Poor old Uncle Lewis!” was heard on every side.
About half-past ten o'clock Helen, accompanied by Sanders, came down-town. At the door of Carson's office they parted and Helen came in. Carson happened to be alone. He rose suddenly from his seat and came towards her, shocked by the sight of her wan face and dejected mien.
“Why, Helen!” he cried, “surely you don't think—” and then he checked himself as he hastened to get a chair for her.
“I've just left mammy,” she began, in a voice that was husky with emotion. “Oh, Carson, you can't imagine it! It is simply heart-rending, awful! She is lying there at death's door staring up at the ceiling, simply benumbed.”
Carson sat down at his desk and leaned his head on his hand. Could he keep back the truth under such pressure? It was at this juncture that Garner came in. Casting a hurried glance at the two, and seeing Helen's grief-stricken attitude, he simply bowed.
“Excuse me, Miss Helen, just a moment,” he said. “Carson, I left a paper in your pigeon-hole,” and as he bent and extracted a blank envelope from the desk he whispered, warningly: “Remember, not one word of this! Don't forget the agreement! Not a soul is to know!” And putting the envelope into his pocket he went out of the room, casting back from the threshold a warning, almost threatening glance.
“I've been with her since sunup,” Helen went on.
“She fainted at first, and when she came to—oh, Carson, you love her as I do, and it would have broken your heart to have heard her! Oh, such pitiful wailing and begging God to put her out of pain!”