pire, Bud left and ran back to Foresta's home.
In the meantime Mrs. Crump had explained the situation to Foresta, who
now told Bud. With bowed heads and troubled hearts the three sat in deep
study as to what to do.

The white people were under the impression that Bud had committed the
murder. They had killed another man thinking that it was he. In case
they now apprehended him, would the popular feeling be that there was a
mistake in the lynching or a mistake as to Bud's having committed the
murder?

Bud felt fully able to demonstrate his innocence, but the ruthless mob
would hardly give him time to collect his evidence, he feared. Thus,
though innocent, he decided that it was best for him to leave Almaville
and remain in hiding for a time at least. Foresta asserted her
determination to go with him it mattered not where he went.

Bud gave to Foresta the privilege of choosing their exile. For a number
of years the condition of the Negroes in the cotton states farther South
had been weighing heavily on her mind. She had read how that under the
credit system, the country merchant, charging exorbitant prices for
merchandise for which the crops stood as security, was causing the Negro
farmer to work from year to year only to sink deeper and deeper into
debt. She had read of the contract system under which ignorant Negroes,
not knowing the contents of the papers signed, practically sold
themselves into slavery, agreeing to work for a number of years for a
mere pittance and further agreeing to be locked up in a stockade at
night and to pay for the expense of a recapture in case they attempted
to escape. She had heard much of the practice of peonage, how that
planters and contractors would enter into collusion with magistrates and
convict innocent Negroes of crimes in order that they might get Negro
laborers by the paying of fines assessed on these trumped up charges.
She had read accounts of investigations of the prison system of the
South, showing that the various states made the earning of money by the
prisoners a prime consideration, and detailing how brutal overseers were
wont to maltreat convicts leased to them by the state. These things
coupled with the absence of reformatories for youths were destined,
Foresta felt assured, to produce a harvest of criminals. What to her
mind added to the hopelessness of the plight of the Negroes was the fact
that an emigration agent was required to pay such a heavy tax and stood
in s