ght has
come to me since that now I could interpret the panther's desire for
blood and sympathise with it, but then I thought nothing. I simply went
forward, and watched, watched with burning eyes for a familiar form that
I had looked for as often before with such different emotions.

"Luck or ill-luck, which you will, was with our party, and just as dawn
was graying the sky, we came upon our quarry crouched in the corner of a
fence. It was only half light, and we might have passed, but my eyes had
caught sight of him, and I raised the cry. We levelled our guns and he
rose and came toward us.

"'I t'ought you wa'n't gwine see me,' he said sullenly, 'I didn't mean
no harm.'

"'Harm!'

"Some of the men took the word up with oaths, others were ominously
silent.

"We gathered around him like hungry beasts, and I began to see terror
dawning in his eyes. He turned to me, 'I's moughty glad you's hyeah,
doc,' he said, 'you ain't gwine let 'em whup me.'

"'Whip you, you hound,' I said, 'I'm going to see you hanged,' and in
the excess of my passion I struck him full on the mouth. He made a
motion as if to resent the blow against even such great odds, but
controlled himself.

"'W'y, doctah,' he exclaimed in the saddest voice I have ever heard,
'w'y, doctah! I ain't stole nuffin' o' yo'n, an' I was comin' back. I
only run off to see my gal, Lucy, ovah to de Centah.'

"'You lie!' I said, and my hands were busy helping the others bind him
upon a horse. Why did I do it? I don't know. A false education, I
reckon, one false from the beginning. I saw his black face glooming
there in the half light, and I could only think of him as a monster.
It's tradition. At first I was told that the black man would catch me,
and when I got over that, they taught me that the devil was black, and
when I had recovered from the sickness of that belief, here were Jube
and his fellows with faces of menacing blackness. There was only one
conclusion: This black man stood for all the powers of evil, the result
of whose machinations had been gathering in my mind from childhood up.
But this has nothing to do with what happened.

"After firing a few shots to announce our capture, we rode back into
town with Jube. The ingathering parties from all directions met us as we
made our way up to the house. All was very quiet and orderly. There was
no doubt that it was as the papers would have said, a gathering of the
best citizens. It was a gathering of stern