escaped, and another the day before.

At last she gossiped of her neighbors, how good they were and how bad.

"And do you like them all?" asked the stranger.

She hesitated.

"Most of them," she said; and then, looking up into his face and putting
her hand into his, as though he were her father, she said:

"There are none I hate; no, none at all."

He looked away, holding her hand in his, and said dreamily:

"You love your neighbor as yourself?"

She hesitated.

"I try--" she began, and then looked the way he was looking; down under
the hill where lay a little, half-ruined cabin.

"They are niggers," she said briefly.

He looked at her. Suddenly a confusion came over her and she insisted,
she knew not why.

"But they are niggers!"

With a sudden impulse she arose and hurriedly lighted the lamp that
stood just within the door, and held it above her head. She saw his dark
face and curly hair. She shrieked in angry terror and rushed down the
path, and just as she rushed down, the black convict came running up
with hands outstretched. They met in mid-path, and before he could stop
he had run against her and she fell heavily to earth and lay white and
still. Her husband came rushing around the house with a cry and an oath.

"I knew it," he said. "It's that runaway nigger." He held the black man
struggling to the earth and raised his voice to a yell. Down the highway
came the convict guard, with hound and mob and gun. They paused across
the fields. The farmer motioned to them.

"He--attacked--my wife," he gasped.

The mob snarled and worked silently. Right to the limb of the red oak
they hoisted the struggling, writhing black man, while others lifted the
dazed woman. Right and left, as she tottered to the house, she searched
for the stranger with a yearning, but the stranger was gone. And she
told none of her guests.

"No--no, I want nothing," she insisted, until they left her, as they
thought, asleep. For a time she lay still, listening to the departure of
the mob. Then she rose. She shuddered as she heard the creaking of the
limb where the body hung. But resolutely she crawled to the window and
peered out into the moonlight; she saw the dead man writhe. He stretched
his arms out like a cross, looking upward. She gasped and clung to the
window sill. Behind the swaying body, and down where the little,
half-ruined cabin lay, a single flame flashed up amid the far-off shout
and cry of the mob. A fierce joy