“Isn't it awful?” she said to Carson, as he came out at the gate. “Of course, it is the continuation of the trouble here in town.”
“How do they know a negro did it?” Carson asked, obeying the natural tendency of a lawyer to get at the facts.
“It seems,” answered Gordon, “that Mrs. Johnson lived barely long enough after the neighbors got there to say that it was done by a mulatto, as well as she could see in the darkness. In their fury, the people are roughly handling every yellow negro in the neighborhood. They say the darkies are all hiding out in the woods and mountains.”
Then the conversation paused, for old Uncle Lewis, who was at work with a pair of garden-sheafs behind some rose-bushes close by, uttered a groan and, wide-eyed and startled, came towards them.
“It's awful, awful, awful!” they heard him say. “Oh, my Gawd, have mercy!”
“Why, Uncle Lewis, what's the matter?” Helen asked, in sudden concern and wonder over his manner and tone.
“Oh, missy, missy!” he groaned, as he shook his head despondently. “My boy over dar 'mongst 'em right now. Oh, my Lawd! I know what dem white folks gwine ter say fust thing, kase Pete didn't had no mo' sense 'an ter—”
“Stop, Lewis!” Carson said, sharply. “Don't be the first to implicate your own son in a matter as serious as this is.”
“I ain't, marster!” the old man groaned, “but I know dem white folks done it 'fo' dis.”
“I'm afraid you are right, Lewis,” Keith said, sympathetically. “He may be absolutely innocent, but, since his trouble with that mob, Pete has really talked too much. Well, I must be going.”