In the meantime great excitement prevailed. The town was crowded for days with farmers who came flocking in from every direction. The crime was discussed and magnified; it was common talk that the "niggers of Madison County are getting too bigoty"--that they wouldn't "keep their places." Fuel was added to the flame by the common report that the murderers of the Hodges family were members of a Negro society known as the "Before Day Club," and wild stories were told of other murders that had been planned, the names of intended victims even being reported. On the Sunday night before the trial, two Negro women, walking down the street are said to have crowded two respectable white girls off the sidewalk. A crowd dragged the women from a church where they had gone, took them to the outskirts of the town, whipped them both violently, and ordered them to leave the county. "Let the law take its course," urged the good citizen. "The Negroes have been sentenced to be hanged, let them be hanged legally; we want no disgrace to fall on the town." _How the Lynchers Themselves Defend a Lynching_ But as the trial progressed and the crowd increased, there were louder and louder expressions of the belief that hanging was too good for such a crime. I heard intelligent citizens argue that a Negro criminal, in order to be a hero in the eyes of his people, does not mind being hanged! Another distinct feeling developed--a feeling that I found in other lynching towns: that somehow the courts and the law were not to be trusted to punish the criminals properly. Although Reed and Cato were sentenced to be hanged, the crowd argued that "the lawyers would get them off," that "the case would be appealed, and they would go free." Members of the mob tried to get Sheriff Kendrick to promise not to remove the Negroes to Savannah, fearing that in some way they would be taken beyond the reach of justice. In other words, there existed a deep-seated conviction that justice too often miscarried in Bulloch County and that murderers commonly escaped punishment through the delays and technicalities of the law. _A Habit of Man-killing_