truck with his crop--spring upon the Colonel with the cry,
"It's my tu'n, now, Cunnel Gaylord. You whup me, an' I'll let you see
what it feels like."

The Colonel turned and clinched with his assailant, and in the struggle
the light was dropped. Mose, with a cry, ran forward to his master's
assistance, but when the negro saw him climbing up the bank he suddenly
screamed, and hurling the old man from him, turned and fled.

"The fellow must have taken him for the devil when he saw those eyes,
and I don't wonder!" Terry interpolated at this point.

After the Colonel's murder, it seems that Mose, crazed by grief and
fear, had watched us carry the body away, and then had stayed by the
spot where his master had died. This accounted for the marks on the
border of the pool. Knowing all of the intricate passages and hiding
places as he did, it had been an easy matter for him to evade the party
that had searched for his body. He ate the food the murderer had left,
but this being exhausted, he would, I haven't a doubt, have died there
himself with the unreasoning faithfulness of a dog.

When he finished his rambling and in some places scarcely intelligible
account, we sat for a moment with our eyes upon his face, fascinated by
his look. Every bit of repugnance I had ever felt toward him had
vanished, and there was left in its place only a sense of pity. Mose's
cheeks were hollow, his features sharper than ever, and his face was
almost pale. From underneath his straight, black, matted hair his eyes
glittered feverishly, and their expression of uncomprehending anguish
was pitiful to see. He seemed like a dumb animal that has come into
contact with death for the first time and asks the reason.

Terry took his eyes from Mose's face and looked down at the table with a
set jaw. I do not think that he was deriving as much pleasure from the
sight as he had expected. We all of us experienced a feeling of relief
when the doctor appeared at the door. We turned Mose over to him with
instructions to do what he could for the poor fellow and to take him
back to Four-Pools.

As the door shut behind them, the sheriff said (with a sigh, I thought),
"This business proves one thing: it's never safe to lynch a man until
you are sure of the facts."

"It proves another thing," said Terry, dryly, "which is a thing you
people don't seem to have grasped; and that is that negroes are human
beings and have feelings like the rest of us. Poor old Colone