uch a danger of bodily harm from the planters that nothing was being
done toward pointing the inhabitants of the blighted regions to better
lands.

Foresta concluded to choose Mississippi, a state in which conditions
were in some respects so thoroughly forbidding, as their future home.
Two things influenced her in making a choice, a desire to use her
education for the amelioration of the ills of which she had heard so
much and the thought that a land reputed to be so destitute of hope for
the Negro would be searched last of all for Negro refugees. So the two
had gone forth in the darkness and journeyed southward.

With money that Bud had saved they bought a small farm near Maulville,
Mississippi. It was not long before Foresta's quiet influence was felt
throughout that region. The whites who had been preying upon the more
ignorant of the Negroes were not long in tracing this new influence to
its source. It was agreed among them that the Fultons (for such was the
name assumed by Bud and Foresta) were rather undesirable neighbors and a
decision was reached to put them out of the way. The thousands of
individual murders, and lynching by mobs, had so blunted the sensibility
of these whites that they reached this decision without any qualms of
conscience. Sidney Fletcher was agreed upon as the man to rid the
settlement of Bud and Foresta.

On this particular afternoon, Foresta's hair was hanging down her back
in girlish fashion. A small cap sat upon the top of her head, while a
blue gingham apron protected her dress. She had finished the milking and
was walking toward the house when Sidney Fletcher, the owner of a
neighboring farm, approached her.

"Where has Tobe Stewart gone?" asked Fletcher, in a very gruff manner,
inquiring about a Negro lad who had run away from him.

Foresta looked at him steadily without replying.

"You ---- wench, you, you can't speak can you? You and that dad blasted
man of yours have got the big head, anyway," said Fletcher, drawing his
pistol and starting toward Foresta.

Foresta dropped her milk pail and ran into the house.

Fletcher took a seat on a bench in the yard and awaited the coming of
Bud Harper, Foresta's husband, who was out hunting and was not due for
some time yet.

Foresta stole out of the door on the other side of the house and reached
a patch of woods without being observed by Sidney Fletcher. By a
circuitous route she was able to place herself in Bud's pathway so as
to