own bosom.

The sight of two agitated women rushing through the quiet streets at so
early an hour in the morning had attracted attention and aroused
curiosity, and the story of the murder, having once become known, spread
with the customary rapidity of bad news. Very soon a policeman, and a
little later a sheriff's officer, arrived at the house and took charge
of the remains to await the arrival of the coroner.

By nine o'clock a coroner's jury had been summoned, who, after brief
deliberation, returned a verdict of willful murder at the hands of some
person or persons unknown, while engaged in the commission of a
burglary.

No sooner was the verdict announced than the community, or at least the
white third of it, resolved itself spontaneously into a committee of the
whole to discover the perpetrator of this dastardly crime, which, at
this stage of the affair, seemed merely one of robbery and murder.

Suspicion was at once directed toward the negroes, as it always is when
an unexplained crime is committed in a Southern community. The suspicion
was not entirely an illogical one. Having been, for generations, trained
up to thriftlessness, theft, and immorality, against which only thirty
years of very limited opportunity can be offset, during which brief
period they have been denied in large measure the healthful social
stimulus and sympathy which holds most men in the path of rectitude,
colored people might reasonably be expected to commit at least a share
of crime proportionate to their numbers. The population of the town was
at least two thirds colored. The chances were, therefore, in the absence
of evidence, at least two to one that a man of color had committed the
crime. The Southern tendency to charge the negroes with all the crime
and immorality of that region, unjust and exaggerated as the claim may
be, was therefore not without a logical basis to the extent above
indicated.

It must not be imagined that any logic was needed, or any reasoning
consciously worked out. The mere suggestion that the crime had been
committed by a negro was equivalent to proof against any negro that
might be suspected and could not prove his innocence. A committee of
white men was hastily formed. Acting independently of the police force,
which was practically ignored as likely to favor the negroes, this
committee set to work to discover the murderer.

The spontaneous activity of the whites was accompanied by a visible
shrinkage of