It seemed the family claimed to be part Mexican, which would account for the darkness of their complexion. But I had seen too many different races, however, to mistake a streak of Ethiopian. Having been in Mexico, I knew them to be almost entirely straight-haired (being a cross between an Indian and a Spaniard). When I observed this young man, I readily distinguished the negro features; the brown eyes, the curly hair, and the set of the nose.

The father had come into the sand hills of Nebraska some thirty-five years before, taken a homestead, but from where he came from no one seemed to know. It was there he married his white wife, and to the union was born the three sons, Frank, the eldest, Will, and Len, the youngest.

The father sold the homestead some twenty years before and moved to another county, and had run a hotel since in the town of Pencer, where they now live.

Unlike his younger brother, Frank, the eldest son, could easily have passed for a white, that is, so long as no one looked for the streak. But when the fellow whose timely information had kept me from embarrassing myself, and perhaps from insulting the young man, a few minutes later called out, "Hello, Frank!" to a tall man, one look disclosed to my scrutiny the negro in his features. I was not mistaken. It was Frank Woodring.

In view of the fact, that in some chapters of this story I dwell on the negro, and on account of the insistence of many of them who declare they are deprived of opportunities on account of their color, I take the privilege of putting down here a sketch of this Frank Woodring's life. And although these people deny a relation to the negro race, it was well known by the public in that part of the country, that they were mixed, for it had been told to me by every one who knew them, therefore the instance cannot be regarded altogether as an exception.