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of the facts proved at the trial, which are as follows.

On the day on which the offence was committed, John H. Tabb and the two Thorntons were at Gloucester Court house, where they went in pursuance of a warrant sued out by Tabb against Thornton, I never heard the nature of the controversy, it was some trifling matter I presume. The Justice of peace before whom the controversy was tried, decided in favor of Thornton, and against Tabb. Tabb, who is an elderly man, above sixty years of age — in company with a youth named Bland, about 18 years old — left the Court House on foot, about nightfall, the evening was rainy and darkness set in very quickly. When a few hundred yards from the C H, Tabb and Bland left the public road and took a footpath across an open field, by which an angle in the public road is saved and the distance to the pedestrians, shortened. The path unites with the road again at a point perhaps a quarter of a mile further on.

When Tabb had gotten about half way across the open field he and Bland saw a group of persons standing together on the path, and one coming to where they were standing, he perceived that they were John and Baylor Thornton and two women. Tabb and Bland passed on without stopping or speaking, and as soon as they passed the negroes began to call after them, telling them to stop and abusing Tabb accompanying their abuse with jeers and taunts intended

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