dogs--that strip
between the river and marsh, and not let any one go through from this
way. Can you handle it?"

Charley Nixon had borne arms in France, his father had ridden with the
Clansmen of long ago, and his answer was clear and unhesitating over the
wire. "Any one who tries to get by me will be S. O. L.," he said.

A moment later I reached the coroner at Ochakee. He promised he could
start for the scene at once, in his car, bringing the sheriff or his
deputy, and that he would take all the precautions he could to cut off
the murderer's escape. Then Nopp and I returned to the living-room.

It was an unforgettable picture--that scene in the big living-room where
Nealman's guests had been so merry a few minutes before. A bottle of
whiskey still stood on the table in the center, half-filled glasses,
in which the ice had not yet melted, stood beside it and on the
window-sills and smoking stands. Little, unwavering filaments of blue
smoke streamed up from half-burned cigarettes. In the places of the
revelers stood a group of sobbing, terrified negroes.

We were not native southerners, accustomed to seeing the black people in
their paroxysms of fear, and the sight went straight home to all of us.
These were the "cotton field niggers" of which old-time planters speak,
slaves to the blackest superstitions that ever cursed the tribes of the
Congo, and the night's crime had gone hard with them. Their faces were
gray, rather than black, the whites of their eyes were plainly visible,
and they made a confused babble of sound. The women, particularly, were
sobbing and praying alternately; most of the men were either stuttering
or apoplectic with sheer terror. Some of them cowered, shrieking, as we
opened the door.

"Shut up that noise," Nopp demanded. A dead silence followed his words.
"No one is going to hurt you as long as you stay in here and shut up.
Where's the boss."

One of them pointed, rather feebly, to the next room. And I took the
instant's interval to reach the side of some one that sat, alone and
silent, in a big chair in the chimney-corner.

It was Edith Nealman, and she had been rounded up with the rest of the
house employees. Her bare feet were in slippers, and she wore a long
dressing-gown over her night-dress. Her hair hung in two golden braids
over her shoulders.

I was glad to see that the terror of the blacks had not passed, in the
least degree, to her. Of course she was pale and shaken, her eyes