The first of February, 1924, Jon Forsyte, convalescing from the ‘flu, was sitting in the lounge of an hotel at Camden, South Carolina, with his bright hair slowly rising on his scalp. He was reading about a lynching.

A voice behind him said:

“Will you join our picnic over at those old-time mounds today?”

Looking up, he saw a young acquaintance called Francis Wilmot, who came from further south.

“Very glad to. Who’s going?”

“Why, just Mr. and Mrs. Pulmore Hurrison, and that English novelist, Gurdon Minho, and the Blair girls and their friends, and my sister Anne and I. You could ride over horseback, if you want exercise.”

“All right; they’ve got some new horses in this morning from Columbia.”

“Why, that’s fine! My sister and I’ll ride horseback too, and some of the Blair girls. The Hurrisons can take the others.”

“I say,” said Jon, “this is a pretty bad case of lynching.”

The young man to whom he spoke leaned in the window. Jon admired his face, as of ivory, with dark hair and eyes, and narrow nose and lips, and his lissom attitude.

“All you Britishers go off the deep-end when you read of a lynching. You haven’t got the negro problem up where you are at Southern Pines. They don’t have it any to speak of in North Carolina.”

“No, and I don’t profess to understand it. But I can’t see why negroes shouldn’t be tried the same as white men. There may be cases where you’ve got to shoot at sight; but how can you defend mob law? Once you catch a man, he ought to be tried properly.”

“We’re not taking any chances with that particular kind of trouble.”

“But without trial, how can you tell he’s guilty?”

“Well, we’d sooner do without an innocent darkie now and again than risk our women.”

“But killing a man for a thing he hasn’t done is the limit.”

“Maybe, in Europe. But, here, things are in the large, still.”