He had ridden the mule to Leestown and back--twenty-four miles. He had had to ride slowly, because the old mule tired easily and had gone a little lame. He would have made the trip by stage, but no stage went in the afternoon. Both towns were off the railroad. He had gone to Miss Sadie Lee’s house, and again Miss Jinny had been away. Miss Sadie had taken her motoring. The best he had been able to accomplish was to leave a note, to be delivered to Miss Jinny immediately upon her return. He hadn’t dared wait for her. If she wasn’t going to stop Zach Draper, he had to do it himself. He couldn’t sleep. His mind ran all night, as uselessly as the arms of an unconnected windmill. It showed him scores of unrelated pictures: the faces of boys he knew off at school; the little white New England church in the village there; Draper, laughing at him; a bend in the creek where he used to swim; his father’s body; the corner of a cornfield behind a snake fence covered with purple morning glories. It repeated scraps of the day’s conversations. On and on and on. It reverberated soundlessly with the voodooistic terror that ran through the Negroes of the Piney Woods at the prospect of the morrow’s sensation. Fear, like a hot wind, blew across it, searing and drying his thoughts. He felt things older and bigger and more terrible than he had realized threshing around him in the hot, humid Southern air.... Finally he got up and rummaged in a cupboard and slipped his father’s old pistol into the pocket of his coat, where it hung over the back of a chair. He had a plan now. It was as simple as Cain’s.... Toward morning he slept a little. * * * * * Woodie sat on the front pew in the Old Ship of Zion, between his mother and Maria Knox. His mother was heavily swathed in borrowed black. Her plump, innocent features, still swollen from weeping, looked purged and peaceful beneath her veil. She alone was unaware of the air of tense expectancy that bound the rest of the congregation together. In front of them stood his father’s coffin, on two sawhorses banked deep with cape jasmine, which had just begun to bloom; dead-white, half-opened flowers set stiffly in stiff, glistening green leaves. Their heavy odour lay like a blanket over the place in spite of the open windows. A score of spring scents outside strove against it in vain. Behind him the church filled steadily. He could feel the waiting people: row on close-packed row, all their faces turned one way--tense--expectant--frightened. They were all very still. Somewhere in the distance a man was calling hogs. The long-drawn notes of his voice sounded like a horn. It died away, and the kind of silence that belongs only to funerals fell upon the little church. Into it the clock on the wall plumped nine twangy notes.