Such were the thoughts that went crashing through Ramon's mind and his grip on the woman's arm slackened. The woman wrenched herself loose and continued her journey with increased speed. As late as it was Ramon hurried to the Harpers' home and found the Negroes standing about at a distance from the house, discussing the sudden reappearance and disappearance of Bud Harper, when there, all agreed, lay Bud before their very eyes. Ramon returned to his home strangely becalmed, and though late in the night he sat down and wrote the following letter to his home in the North. "MY DEAR NORFLEET: I am in the throes of an overwhelming sorrow. My Alene has been foully murdered. A mystery surrounds the case. We cannot fathom the motive of the crime. To-day (rather yesterday now, for it is two o'clock in the morning) a man accused of murdering her was lynched. To-night the man who was supposed to have been lynched made his appearance at his home. But the mother sticks to it that the real murderer, her son, is the corpse, and appearances seem to bear out the contention. Now it may be that Alene's murderer is yet alive and that an injustice has been wrought upon somebody. My heart is more firmly knit to my Southern white brethren than ever before. I fling ambition to the winds. Tell my friends that I shall not make the race for Congress, and thank them for me for the way in which they have always seconded my aspirations. It pains me much to not be in a position to attempt to scale the heights which their loving hearts fancied I could make with ease. I shall walk with my kith and kin of the South in the shadow, for in the furnace of a common sorrow, my heart has been melted into one with theirs. We of the South (you see I call myself one of them), know not what the future has in store for our beloved section, but we face the ordeal with the grim determination of our race. If you believe in prayer, pray that I may be just and may even in darkness do the right. "RAMON, 'THE MAD.'" When Alene had been laid to rest, Ramon, after lingering in Almaville for a few weeks, disappeared completely, leaving behind no trace of himself. He had previously given Mr. Daleman and friends assurances that he would do no violence to himself. So while they knew not where he was nor what was his mission, they were not unduly apprehensive as to his welfare. Ramon Mansford had simply stained himself a chocolate brown and had thus passed from the Anglo-Saxon to the Negro race. He had gone to fathom the mystery of Alene's murder. CHAPTER XVII. _Peculiar Divorce Proceedings._ "Dilsy Brooks, would you 'low me er few wurds wid you?"