They went their way, and Miller hurried on.  They might resist attack; he thought it extremely unlikely that they would begin it; but he knew perfectly well that the mere knowledge that some of the negroes contemplated resistance would only further inflame the infuriated whites.  The colored men might win a momentary victory, though it was extremely doubtful; and they would as surely reap the harvest later on.  The qualities which in a white man would win the applause of the world would in a negro be taken as the marks of savagery.  So thoroughly diseased was public opinion in matters of race that the negro who died for the common rights of humanity might look for no meed of admiration or glory.  At such a time, in the white man’s eyes, a negro’s courage would be mere desperation; his love of liberty, a mere animal dislike of restraint.  Every finer human instinct would be interpreted in terms of savagery.  Or, if forced to admire, they would none the less repress.  They would applaud his courage while they stretched his neck, or carried off the fragments of his mangled body as souvenirs, in much the same way that savages preserve the scalps or eat the hearts of their enemies.

But concern for the fate of Josh and his friends occupied only a secondary place in Miller’s mind for the moment.  His wife and child were somewhere ahead of him.  He pushed on.  He had covered about a quarter of a mile more, and far down the street could see the signs of greater animation, when he came upon the body of a woman lying upon the sidewalk.  In the dusk he had almost stumbled over it, and his heart came up in his mouth.  A second glance revealed that it could not be his wife.  It was a fearful portent, however, of what her fate might be.  The “war” had reached the women and children.  Yielding to a professional instinct, he stooped, and saw that the prostrate form was that of old Aunt Jane Letlow.  She was not yet quite dead, and as Miller, with a tender touch, placed her head in a more comfortable position, her lips moved with a last lingering flicker of consciousness:—­

“Comin’, missis, comin’!”

Mammy Jane had gone to join the old mistress upon whose memory her heart was fixed; and yet not all her reverence for her old mistress, nor all her deference to the whites, nor all their friendship for her, had been able to save her from this raging devil of race hatred which momentarily possessed the town.

Perceiving that he could do no good, Miller hastened onward, sick at heart.  Whenever he saw a party of white men approaching,—­these brave reformers never went singly,—­he sought concealment in the shadow of a tree or the shrubbery in some yard until they had passed.  He had covered about two thirds of the distance homeward, when his eyes fell upon a group beneath a lamp-post, at sight of which he turned pale with horror, and rushed forward with a terrible cry.

XXXV