Without further protest, Pete dropped his hoe and went with them. Doggedly, and with an overpowering and surly sense of injury, he slouched along between the two men. A quarter of a mile down a narrow, private road, which was traversed without meeting any one, they came to Parsons' farm-house, a one-story frame building with a porch in front, and a roof that sloped back to a crude lean-to shed in the rear. A wagon stood under the spreading branches of a big beech, and near by a bent-tongued harrow, weighted down by a heap of stones, a chicken-coop, an old beehive, and a ramshackle buggy. No one was in sight. No living thing stirred about the place, save the turkeys and ducks and a solitary peacock strutting about in the front yard, where rows of half-buried stones from the mountain-sides formed the jagged borders of a gravel walk from the fence to the steps. The sheriff drew the gate open and, according to rural etiquette, hallooed lustily. After a pause the sound of some one moving in the house reached their ears. A window-curtain was drawn aside, and later a woman stood in the doorway and advanced wonderingly to the edge of the porch. She was portly, red of complexion, about middle-aged, and dressed in checked gingham, the predominating color of which was blue. “Well, I'll be switched!” she ejaculated; “what do you-uns want?” “Want to see Jabe, Mrs. Parsons; is he about?” “He's over in his hay-field, or was a minute ago. What you want with him?” “We've got to borrow some hosses,” the sheriff answered. “We want three--one fer each. We're goin' to try to dodge them blood-thirsty mobs, Mrs. Parsons, an' put this feller in jail, whar he'll be safe.” “_That_ boy?” The woman came down the steps, rolling her sleeves up. “Why, that boy didn't kill them folks. I know that boy, he's the son of old Mammy Linda and Uncle Lewis Warren. Now, look here, Jeff Braider, don't you and Bill King go and make eternal fools o' yourselves. That boy didn't no more do that nasty work than I did. It ain't _in_ 'im. He hain't that look. I know niggers as well as you or anybody else.” “No, I _didn't_ do it, Mrs. Parsons,” the prisoner affirmed. “I didn't! I didn't!” “I know you didn't,” said the woman. “Wasn't I standin' here in the door this mornin' and saw him git up an' go out to git his wood and cook his breakfast? Then I seed 'im shoulder his grubbin'-hoe and go to the field to work. You officers may think you know it all, but no nigger ain't agoin' to stay around like that after killin' a man an' woman in cold blood. The nigger that did that job was some scamp that's fur from the spot by this time, and not a boy fetched up among good white folks like this one was, with the best old mammy and daddy that ever had kinky heads.” “But witnesses say he threatened Abe Johnson a month ago,” argued Braider. “I have to do my duty, Mrs. Parsons. There never would be any justice if we overlooked a thing as pointed as that is.”