HAT morning at the usual hour the store-keepers opened their dingy houses in the main street and placed along the narrow brick sidewalks the dusty, stock-worn samples of their wares. The clerks and porters as they swept the floors would pause to discuss the happening of the night just gone. Old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda Warren's boy had been summarily dealt with, that was all. The longer word just used had of late years become a part of the narrowest vocabulary, suggesting to crude minds many meanings not thought of by lexicographers, not the least of which was something pertaining to justice far-reaching, grim, and unfailing in these days of bribery and graft. Only a few of the more analytical and philosophical ventured to ask themselves if, after all, the boy might have been innocent. If they put the question to the average citizen it was tossed off with a shrug and a “Well, what's the difference? It's such talk as he was guilty of that is at the bottom of all the black crimes throughout the South.” Such venom as Pete's was the very muscle of the black claws that were everywhere reaching out for helpless white throats. Dead? Yes, he was dead. What of it? How else was the black, constantly increasing torrent to be dammed?

And yet by ten o'clock that morning even these tongues were silenced, for news strange and startling began to steal in from the mountains. The party who had been in pursuit of the desperado Sam Dudlow had overtaken him—found him hiding in a bam, covered with hay. He was unarmed and made no resistance, laughing as if the whole thing were a joke. He frankly told them that he would have given himself up earlier, but he had hoped to live long enough to get even with the other leader of the mob that had whipped him at Darley, a certain Dan Willis. He confessed in detail exactly how he had murdered the Johnsons and that he had done it alone. Pete Warren was in no way implicated in it. The lynchers, to get the whole truth, threatened him; they tortured him; they tied him to a tree and piled pine fagots about him, but he still stuck to his statement, and when they had mercifully riddled him with bullets, just as his clothing was igniting, they left him hanging by the road-side, a grewsome scarecrow as a warning to his kind, and, led by Jabe Parsons, they made all haste to reach the faction on Pete Warren's track to tell them that the boy was innocent.

Jabe Parsons, carrying a load on his mind, remembering his wife's valiant stand in behalf of the younger accused, rode faster than his tired fellows, and near his own farm met the lynchers returning from Darley. “Too late,” they told him, in response to his news, the Hillbend boys had done away with the Darley jailbird and mysteriously hidden the body to inspire fear among the negroes.

At Darley consternation swept the place as story after story of Aunt Linda's prostration passed from house to house. “Poor, faithful old woman! Poor old Uncle Lewis!” was heard on every side.

About half-past ten o'clock Helen, accompanied by Sanders, came down-town. At the door of Carson's office they parted and Helen came in. Carson happened to be alone. He rose suddenly from his seat and came towards her, shocked by the sight of her wan face and dejected mien.

“Why, Helen!” he cried, “surely you don't think—” and then he checked himself as he hastened to get a chair for her.

“I've just left mammy,” she began, in a voice that was husky with emotion. “Oh, Carson, you can't imagine it! It is simply heart-rending, awful! She is lying there at death's door staring up at the ceiling, simply benumbed.”

Carson sat down at his desk and leaned his head on his hand. Could he keep back the truth under such pressure? It was at this juncture that Garner came in. Casting a hurried glance at the two, and seeing Helen's grief-stricken attitude, he simply bowed.

“Excuse me, Miss Helen, just a moment,” he said. “Carson, I left a paper in your pigeon-hole,” and as he bent and extracted a blank envelope from the desk he whispered, warningly: “Remember, not one word of this! Don't forget the agreement! Not a soul is to know!” And putting the envelope into his pocket he went out of the room, casting back from the threshold a warning, almost threatening glance.

“I've been with her since sunup,” Helen went on.

“She fainted at first, and when she came to—oh, Carson, you love her as I do, and it would have broken your heart to have heard her! Oh, such pitiful wailing and begging God to put her out of pain!”

“Awful, awful!” Dwight said; “but, Helen—” Again he checked himself. Before his mind's eye rose the faces of the faithful group who had stood by him the night before. He had pledged himself to them to keep the thing secret, and no matter what his own faith in Helen's discretion was he had no right, even under stress of her grief, to betray what had occurred. No, he couldn't enlighten her—not just then, at all events.

“I was there when Uncle Lewis came in to tell her that proof had come of Pete's absolute innocence,” Helen went on, “but instead of comforting her it seemed to drive her the more frantic. She—but I simply can't describe it, and I won't try. You will be glad to know, Carson, that the only thing in the shape of comfort she has had was your brave efforts in her behalf. Over and over she called your name. Carson, she used to pray to God; she never mentions Him now. You, and you alone, represent all that is good and self-sacrificing to her. She sent me to you. That's why I am here.”

“She sent you?” Carson was avoiding her eyes, fearful that she might read in his own a hint of the burning thing he was trying to withhold.

“Yes, you see the report has reached her about what the lynchers said in regard to hiding Pete's body. You know how superstitious the negroes are, and she is simply crazy to recover the—the remains. She wants to bury her boy, Carson, and she refuses to believe that some one can't find him and bring him home. She seems to think you can.”

“She wants me to—” He went no further.

“If it is possible, Carson. The whole thing is so awful that it has driven me nearly wild. You will know, perhaps, if anything can be done, but, of course, if it is wholly out of the question—”

“Helen”—in his desperation he had formulated a plan—“there is something that you ought to know. You have every right to know it, and yet I'm bound in honor not to let it out to any one. Last night,” he went on, modestly, “in the hope of formulating some plan to avert the coming trouble, I asked Keith to get a number of my best friends together. We met at Blackburn's store. No positive, sworn vows were made. It was only the sacred understanding between men that the matter was to be held inviolate, owing to the personal interests of every man who had committed himself. You see, they came at my suggestion, as friends of mine true and loyal, and it seems to me that I'd have a moral right, even now, to take another into the body—another whom I trust as thoroughly and wholly as any one of them. Do you understand, Helen?”

“No, I'm in the dark, Carson,” she said, with a feeble smile.

“You see, I want to speak freely to you,” he continued. “I want to tell you some things you ought to know, and yet I am not free to do so unless—unless you will tacitly join us. Helen, do you understand? Are you willing to become one of us so far as absolute secrecy is concerned?”

“I am willing to do anything you'd advise, Carson,” the girl replied, groping for his possible meaning through the cloud of mystery his queer words had thrown around him. “If something took place that I ought to know, and you are willing to confide it to me, I assure you I can be trusted. I'd die rather than betray it.”

“Then, as one of us, I'll tell you,” Carson said, impressively. “Helen, Pete, is not dead.”

“Not dead?” She stared at him incredulously from her great, beautiful eyes. Slowly her white hand went out till it rested on his, and remained there, quivering.

“No, he's alive and so far in safe keeping, free from harm at present, anyway.”

Her fingers tightened on his hand, her sweet, appealing face drew nearer to his; she took a deep breath. “Oh, Carson, don't say that unless you are quite sure.”

“I am absolutely sure,” he said; and then, as they sat, her hand still lingering unconsciously on his, he explained it all, leaving the part he had taken out of the recital as much as possible, and giving the chief credit to his supporters. She sat spellbound, her sympathetic soul melting and flowing into the warm current of his own while he talked as it seemed to her no human being had ever talked before.

When he had concluded she drew away her hand and sat erect, her bosom heaving, her eyes glistening.

“Oh, Carson,” she cried; “I never was so happy in my life! It actually pains me.” She pressed her hand to her breast. “Mammy will be so—but you say she must not—must not yet—”

“That's the trouble,” Dwight said, regretfully.

“I'm sure I could put her and Lewis on their guard so that they would act with discretion, but Blackburn and Garner—in fact, all the rest—are afraid to risk them, just now anyway. You see, they think Linda and Lewis might betray it in their emotions—their very happiness—and so undo everything we have accomplished.”

“Surely, now that the report of Sam Dudlow's confession has gone out, they would let Pete alone,” Helen said.

“I wouldn't like to risk it quite yet,” said Dwight. “Right now, while they are under the impression that an innocent negro has been lynched, they seem inclined to quiet down, but once let the news go out that a few town men, through trickery, had freed the prisoner, and they would rise more furious than ever. No, we must be careful. And, Helen, you must remember your promise. Don't let even your sympathy for Linda draw it out of you.”

“I can keep it, and I really shall,” Helen said.

“But you must release me as soon as you possibly can.”

“I'll do that,” he promised, as she rose to go.

“I'll keep it,” she repeated, when she had reached the door; “but to do so I'll have to stay away from mammy. The sight of her agony would wring it from me.”

“Then don't go near her till I see you,” Dwight cautioned her. “I'll meet all the others to-day and put the matter before them. Perhaps they may give in on that point.”