The news of the killing of Fletcher was not long in getting abroad and a mob of several hundred whites was soon organized to give chase. The news agencies acquainted the whole nation with the situation and day by day the millions of America scanned with eagerness and with sad forebodings the progress of the chase. Several Negroes who happened to be found in the pathway of the mob that was sweeping the country were shot down or hung according to the whim of the pursuers. The two in turn relieved each other at watching, whenever the exhausted condition of one or the other imperatively demanded sleep. It became Foresta's time to sleep and the two took a position behind a huge fallen tree, Foresta reclining her head upon Bud's lap. Soon she was asleep, with Bud looking down in tenderness on her pretty face, now showing signs of the terrible strain that they were undergoing. Bud thought of his position as her protector and gnashed his teeth in the bitterness of his soul as he contemplated his utter helplessness. Hot tears coursed down his cheeks and, dropping on Foresta's face, awakened her. Foresta, who had been having troubled dreams, quickly lifted her head from Bud's lap and looked about in terror. Turning toward him she saw his eyes reddened from weeping. She threw herself on his shoulder and the two now gave way to their feelings for the first time. "We have one consolation, Bud. They can't destroy our love for one another, can they?" said Foresta. Bud was too full of sorrow at the plight of the wife of his bosom to reply. A deep groan of anguish escaped his lips. He leaned back against the log, Foresta still clinging to his neck. After a while both of them from sheer exhaustion fell asleep. CHAPTER XX. _The Blaze._ Little Melville Brant stamped his foot on the floor, looked defiantly at his mother, and said, in the whining tone of a nine-year old child, "Mother, I want to go." "Melville, I have told you this dozen times that you cannot go," responded the mother with a positiveness that caused the boy to feel that his chances were slim. "You are always telling me to keep ahead of the other boys, and I can't even get up to some of them," whined Melville plaintively. "What do you mean?" asked the mother. "Ben Stringer is always a crowing over me. Every time I tell anything big he jumps in and tells what he's seen, and that knocks me out. He has seen a whole lots of lynchings. His papa takes him. I bet if my papa was living he would take me," said Melville. "My boy, listen to your mother," said Mrs. Brant. "Nothing but bad people take part in or go to see those things. I want mother's boy to scorn such things, to be way above them." "Well, I ain't. I want to see it. Ben Stringer ain't got no business being ahead of me," Melville said with vigor. The shrieking of the train whistle caused the fever of interest to rise in the little boy. "There's the train now, mother. Do let me go. I ain't never seen a darky burned."