Chapter 1 Summary

Intruder in the Dust begins with our narrator, Charles Mallison, standing under the shed in front of the closed blacksmith's shop watching the sheriff bring Lucas Beauchamp to the jail, a local black man who has been accused of shooting a white man. While Charles watches Lucas and the crowd that has gathered to also watch, he remembers how he met the man 4 years before.

A friend of Charles's uncle, Mr. Carothers Edmonds, came to dinner to visit with Charles's uncle, Gavin Stevens. Mr. Edmonds invites Charles to go rabbit hunting on his property the following afternoon. Charles, then only 12 years old, along with his servant, a young black boy named Aleck Sander and another young man, one of Edmonds' tenant's sons, start out across a field for the hunt. While crossing a creek, Charles falls off the footbridge and into the river...