r straps. The men was all
on foot, with guns and pistols in their hands. They seen the nigger,
and they all let out a yell, and was after him. They ketched him at the
crick, and took him off along that road that turned off to the left.
I hearn later he was a member of Bishop Warren's congregation, so they
hung him right in front of Big Bethel church.

We stood there on top of the hill and saw the chase and capture. Doctor
Kirby's face was sweating worse than when we first clumb the hill.
He was thinking about that nigger that had pleaded with him. He was
thinking also of the woman. He was glad it hadn't been up to him
personal right then and there to butt in and stop a lynching. He was
glad, fur with them two pictures in front of him he didn't know what he
would of done.

"Thank heaven!" I hearn him say to himself. "Thank heaven that it wasn't
REALLY in my power to choose!"

CHAPTER XVIII

Well, we had pork and greens fur dinner that day, with the best
corn-bread I ever eat anywheres, and buttermilk, and sweet potato pie.
We got 'em at the house of a feller named Withers--Old Daddy Withers.
Which if they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer old woman
than his wife, I never run acrost 'em yet.

They lived all alone, them Witherses, with only a couple of niggers to
help them run their farm. After we eats our dinner and Sam gets his'n
out to the kitchen, we sets out in front of the house and gets to
talking with them, and gets real well acquainted. Which we soon found
out the secret of old Daddy Withers's life--that there innocent-looking
old jigger was a poet. He was kind of proud of it and kind of shamed of
it both to oncet. The way it come out was when the doctor says one
of them quotations he is always getting off, and the old man he looks
pleased and says the rest of the piece it dropped out of straight
through.

Then they had a great time quoting it at each other, them two, and I
seen the doctor is good to loaf around there the rest of the day, like
as not. Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud-looking over
something or other, and she leans over and whispers to the old man:

"Shall I bring it out, Lemuel?"

The old man, he shakes his head, no. But she slips into the house
anyhow, and fetches out a little book with a pale green cover to it, and
hands it to the doctor.

"Bless my soul," says Doctor Kirby, looking at the old man, "you don't
mean to say you write verse yourself