He had hardly finished speaking, when the gate opened, and another man joined them.

“Hello, there, Dock Heaters, that you?” said Bud Mason.

“Yes, it’s me.  How are you, Jane?” said the newcomer.

“Oh, jest middlin’, Dock, I ain’t right well.”

“Well, you might be in better business than settin’ out here talkin’ to Bud Mason.”

“Don’t know how as to that,” said his rival, “seein’ as we’re engaged.”

“You’re a liar!” flashed Dock Heaters.

Bud Mason half rose, then sat down again; his triumph was sufficient without a fight.  To him “liar” was a hard name to swallow without resort to blows, but he only said, his flashing eyes belying his calm tone, “Mebbe I am a liar, jest ast Jane.”

“Is that the truth, Jane?” asked Heaters, angrily.

“Yes, hit is, Dock Heaters, an’ I don’t see what you’ve got to say about it; I hain’t never promised you nothin’ shore.”

Heaters turned toward the gate without a word.  Bud sent after him a mocking laugh, and the bantering words, “You’d better go down, an’ he’p hang them niggers, that’s all you’re good fur.”  And the rival really did bend his steps in that direction.

Another shout arose from the throng down the street, and rising hastily, Bud Mason exclaimed, “I must be goin’, that yell means business.”

“Don’t go down there, Bud!” cried Jane.  “Don’t go, fur my sake, don’t go.”  She stretched out her arms, and clasped them about his neck.

“You don’t want me to miss nothin’ like that,” he said as he unclasped her arms; “don’t you be worried, I’ll be back past here.”  And in a moment he was gone, leaving her cry of “Bud, Bud, come back,” to smite the empty silence.

When Bud Mason reached the scene of action, the mob had already broken into the jail and taken out the trembling prisoners.  The ropes were round their necks and they had been led to a tree.

“See ef they’ll do anymore house-burnin’!” cried one as the ends of the ropes were thrown over the limbs of the tree.

“Reckon they’ll like dancin’ hemp a heap better,” mocked a second.

“Justice an’ pertection!” yelled a third.

“The mills of the gods grind swift enough in Barlow County,” said the schoolmaster.

The scene, the crowd, the flaring lights and harsh voices intoxicated Mason, and he was soon the most enthusiastic man in the mob.  At the word, his was one of the willing hands that seized the rope, and jerked the negroes off their feet into eternity.  He joined the others with savage glee as they emptied their revolvers into the bodies.  Then came the struggle for pieces of the rope as “keepsakes.”  The scramble was awful.  Bud Mason had just laid hold of a piece and cut it off, when some one laid hold of the other end.  It was not at the rope’s end, and the other man also used his knife in getting a hold.  Mason looked up to see who his antagonist was, and his face grew white with anger.  It was Dock Heaters.