We turned Mose over to him with instructions to do what he could for the poor fellow and to take him back to Four-Pools.
As the door shut behind them, the sheriff said (with a sigh, I thought), "This business proves one thing: it's never safe to lynch a man until you are sure of the facts." "It proves another thing," said Terry, dryly, "which is a thing you people don't seem to have grasped; and that is that negroes are human beings and have feelings like the rest of us.

Poor old Colonel Gaylord paid a terrible price for not having learned it earlier in life." We pondered this in silence for a moment, then the sheriff voiced a feeling which, to a slight extent, had been lurking in the background of my own consciousness, in spite of my relief at the denouement.
"It's kind of disappointing when you've got your mind worked up to something big, to find in the end that there was nothing but a chance nigger at the bottom of all that mystery.

Seems sort of a let-down." Terry eyed him with an air of grim humor, then he leaned across the table and spoke with a ring of conviction that carried his message home.
"You are mistaken, Mattison, the murderer of Colonel Gaylord was not a chance nigger.

There was no chance about it.

Colonel Gaylord killed himself.