Shriek after shriek arose from the middle of the lumber yard, accompanied by the triumphant voices repeating: “We’ve got him!” “Dey ain’t got me!” Hitch grinned as he looked over his shoulder at the flashing lights which were converging at another point on top of the lumber. “I’s gwine drap down an’ rest a minute; den I’s gwine take dis red suit of underclothes to Tickfall, an’ git some pants an’ a coat to put on over it.” He dropped down in a thicket of plum-trees, completely exhausted. While he rested he listened. “Kill him!” “Befo’ Gawd, white folks, I ain’t done nothin’, nothin’!” “Knock him over the head with that jug and make him shut up!” A loud scream and silence! “I wonder whut road goes back to Tickfall?” Hitch whispered with fear-stiffened lips. “One dead nigger is more’n a plenty!” Skirting the edge of the town to be out of the electric lights, Hitch Diamond sought the way to the river. With him every place was either up or down that great stream, and he remembered that Tickfall was up the river. When he found the levee and stood looking out upon the dark water so great was his confusion that he was unable to tell which way the stream was flowing. He heard behind him the shouts of the approaching mob, punctuated now and then by the terrible screams of a man being led out of the woods to suffer death. He shuddered and wondered that any man could make as much noise with his throat as did this terrified negro in the hands of the mob. A moment later there was no question in Hitch’s mind which way the Mississippi River was flowing, for Hitch was swimming noiselessly across the current toward the opposite shore. But the Father of Waters is no quiet mill-pond. The pressure of its mighty current is the push of every drop of water falling between the Rockies and the Alleghanies and the inflow of the rivers between. That current carried Hitch down the stream, in spite of his most powerful efforts to resist it. Several men ran out on the levee and threw their lantern rays across the water. Hitch promptly turned on his back and floated, riding the current as motionless as a log. When the light left the water, Hitch struggled on, fighting the dark, muddy stream. Suddenly the water swept him against one of the immense cypress braces of the revetment levee. He seized it, almost dead with weariness. He realized that he was not twenty feet from the shore he had left, and but a short distance from the mob. But this revetment offered a hiding place, and he grasped it eagerly. The voices of the mob came to him distinctly across the water. “Befo’ Gawd, white folks, you-alls ain’t got me right!” the hopeless captive wailed. “I ain’t done nothin’ a-tall! All you white mens knows Dude Blackum--dat’s me! I lives in de cabin jest up ferninst de mill-pond, an’ wucks on a farm fer my livin’!” “Shut up!”