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 cases of the Negroes were called. Most of these were more trivial than the others, being accusations of loitering, vagrancy, pettit larceny and brawling. Invariably sentences of differing lengths to the chain gang were meted out to them. Appeals were useless. Usually after a woebegone look, a hopeless pleading with eyes for sympathy and leniency they were mercilessly sent to the chain gang, from where they were paroled to the various farms. Thus Dr. Tansey surmised, were the farm hands recruited.

Invariably they were allowed but a few words when asked to plead guilty or not.

"Boss, Yer Honoh," they would start, "I didn't do nothing.

"Thirty days in the gang," would be the interruption of the judge.

The court room was almost cleared of cases. In the rear of the restricted side of the room, huddled into a small group were four colored persons, one a young girl, who was weeping silently, two elderly persons, a man and a woman, and a young brown skinned youth, tall and rugged, manly and clean looking. In fact the group was in decided contrast to the prisoners making up court cases, disposition of which the two men had witnessed. At intervals the old woman would lean tenderly over the weeping girl to comfort her. The man sat grimly watching the judge, his face muscles as taut as graven images, his arms folded across his breast, a veritable Ethiopian sphinx.

The judge, a rather florid, puffing, medium sized per-