The leader now learned of an intention to riddle his body with bullets when the drop occurred. Each member had pledged obedience to orders; each had been pledged to take no liquor for hours before, or during this expedition--pledges so far rigidly observed. The leader addressed them: 'We are here to avenge outrage on a helpless child, and to let it be well known that such crime shall not go unpunished in this community. But mutilation of this fiend's remains will be a reflection upon ourselves and not a dispensation of justice.' "The negro, seeing his end surely at hand, broke down, pleading for mercy; confessed that he had appreciated in advance the great peril in which his crime might place him, but had argued that, as a stranger, he would not be liable to identification, and that as the country was thickly wooded, he was sure of escape. 'But, fo' Gawd, gent'mun, ef a white man f'om de Norf hadn't put't in my hade dat a white 'oman warn' none too good fuh--' "Word was given, and he dropped into eternity. It was broad daylight when the party got back to town. They overtook several negro men going to work who knew full well what they had been about. But there was no sign of protest or demur. The Commonwealth's Attorney made efforts to ascertain the perpetrators of the deed, but as the company entered the town and jail so quietly and left it with so little disturbance that only one person in the village had knowledge of their coming and going, no one was discovered who could name a single member of the party or who had any idea of whence they came or whither they went. So of course no indictment could be found." This was in 1870; since then till now no similar crime has occurred in that community. Within the circumscribed radius of its influence, lynching seems to eradicate the evil for which administered. The moderation marking this execution has not always accompanied lynching. Reading accounts of unnecessary tortures inflicted, of very orgies of vengeance, people remote from the scenes, Southerners no less than others, have shuddered with disgust, and trembled with concern for the dignity of their own race. Only people on the spot, writhing under the agony of provocation, comprehended the fury of response to the crime of crimes. Vigilants meant to make their awful vengeance effective deterrent to the crime's repetition. No other crime offers such problems to relatives and officers of justice and to the people among whom it occurs; it is so outside of civilisation that there seem no terms for dispassionate discussion, no fine adjustment of civil trial and legal penalty.