"You deserve it, Blake. But I'm against mob law. Quick, slip out the back way. You can just catch the eleven o'clock express and get out of the State."
Without waiting to see the effect of his advice Old Hosie hurried after Katherine. She had reached the bottom of the stairway just as cooperated shoulders crashed against the door and made it shiver on its hinges. Her intention was to go out and speak to the crowd, but to open the front door was to admit and be overwhelmed by the maddened mob. She knew the house almost as well as she knew her own, and she recalled that the dining-room had a French window which opened upon the piazza on the side away from the crowd. She ran back through the darkened rooms, swung open this window and ran about the piazza to the front door. As she reached it, the human battering-ram drew back for another infuriated lunge.
She sprang between the men and the door.
"Stop! Stop!" she cried.
"What the hell's this!" ejaculated the leader of the assault.
"Say, if it ain't a woman!" cried a member of the battering-ram.
"Out of the way with you!" roared the leader in a fury.
But she placed her back against the door.
"Stop--men! Give me just one word!"
"Better stop this, boys!" gasped a man at the foot of the steps, struggling in half a dozen pairs of arms. "I warn you! It's against the law!"
"Shut up, Jim Nichols; this is our business!" cried the leader to the helpless sheriff. "And now, you"--turning again to Katherine--"out of the way!"
The seething, torch-lit mob on the lawn below repeated his cry. The leader, his wrath increasing, seized Katherine roughly by the arm and jerked her aside:
"Now, all together, boys!" he shouted.
But at that instant upon the front of the mob there fell a tall, lean fury with a raging voice and a furiously swinging cane. It was Old Hosie. Before this fierce chastisement, falling so suddenly upon their heads, the battering-ram for a moment pressed backward.
"You fools! You idiots!" the old man cried, and his high, sharp voice cut through all the noises of the mob. "Is that the way you treat the woman that saved you!"
"Saved us?" some one shouted incredulously. "Her save us?"
"Yes, saved you!" Old Hosie cried in a rising voice down upon the heads of the crowd. His cane had ceased its flailing; the crowd had partially ceased its uproar. "Do you know who that woman is? She's Katherine West!"
"Oh, the lady lawyer!" rose several jeering voices.
For the moment Old Hosie's tall figure, with his cane outstretched, had the wrathful majesty of a prophet of old, denouncing his foolish and reprobate people.
"Go on, all of you, laugh at her to-night!" he shouted. "But after to-night you'll all slink around Westville, ashamed to look anything in the face higher than a dog! For half a year you've been sneering at Katherine West. And see how she's paid you back! It was she that found out your enemy. It was she that dug up all the facts and evidence you've read in those papers there. It was she that's saved you from being robbed. And now----"
"She done all that?" exclaimed a voice from the now stilled mob.
"Yes, she done all that!" shouted Old Hosie. "And what's more, she got out that paper in your hands. While you've been sneering at her, she's been working for you. And now, after all this, you're not even willing to listen to a word from her!" His voice rose in its contemptuous wrath still one note higher. "And now listen to me! I'm going to tell you exactly what you are! You are all----"
But Westville never learned exactly what it was. Just then Old Hosie was firmly pulled back by the tails of his Prince Albert coat and found himself in the possession of the panting, dishevelled sheriff of Galloway County.
"You've made your point, Hosie," said Jim Nichols. "They'll listen to her now."
Katherine stepped forward into the space Old Hosie had involuntarily vacated. With the torchlights flaring up into her face she stood there breathing deeply, awed into momentary silence by the great crowd and by the responsibility that weighed upon her.
"If, as Mr. Hollingsworth has said," she began in a tremulous but clear voice that carried to the farthest confines of the lawn, "you owe me anything, all I ask in return is that you refrain from mob violence;" and she went on to urge upon them the lawful course. The crowd, taken aback by the accusations and revelations Old Hosie had flung so hotly into their faces, strangely held by her impassioned woman's figure pedestalled above them on the porch, listened to her with an attention and respect which they as yet were far from understanding.
She felt that she had won her audience, that she had turned them back to lawful measures, when suddenly there was a roar of "Blake!
Blake!"--the stilled crowd became again a mob--and she saw that the focus of their gaze had shifted from her to a point behind her.
Looking about, she saw that the door had opened, and that Blake, pale and erect, was standing in the doorway. The crowd tried to surge forward, but the front ranks, out of their new and but half-comprehended respect for Katherine, stood like a wall against the charge that would have overwhelmed her.
Blake moved forward to her side.
"I should like to speak to them, if I can," he said quietly.
Katherine held up her hand for silence. The mob hissed and cursed him, and tried to break through the human fortification of the front ranks.
Through it all Blake stood silent, pale, without motion. Katherine, her hand still upraised, continued to cry out for silence; and after a time the uproar began in a measure to diminish.
Katherine took quick advantage of the lull.
"Gentlemen," she called out, "won't you please give Mr. Blake just a word!"
Cries that they should give him a chance to speak ran through the crowd, and thus abjured by its own members the mob quieted yet further. While they were subsiding into order Blake looked steadily out upon this sea of hostile faces. Katherine watched him breathlessly, wondering what he was about to say. It swept in upon her, with a sudden catching of the throat, that he made a fine figure standing there so straight, so white, with so little sign of fear; and despite what the man had done, again some of her old admiration for him thrilled through her, and with it an infinite pang of regret for what he might have been.
At length there was moderate order, and Blake began to speak.
"Gentlemen, I do not wish to plead for myself," he said quietly, yet in his far-carrying voice. "What I have done is beyond your forgiveness. I merely desire to say that I am guilty; to say that I am here to give myself into your hands. Do with me as you think best. If you prefer immediate action, I shall go with you without resistance.
If you wish to let the law take its course, then"--here he made a slight gesture toward Jim Nichols, who stood beside him--"then I shall give myself into the hands of the sheriff. I await your choice."
With that he paused. A perfect hush had fallen on the crowd. This man who had dominated them in the days of his glory, dominated them for at least a flickering moment in this the hour of his fall. For that brief moment all were under the spell of their habit to honour him, the spell of his natural dignity, the spell of his direct words.
Then the spell was over. The storm broke loose again. There were cries for immediate action, and counter cries in favour of the law. The two cries battled with each other. For a space there was doubt as to which was the stronger. Then that for the law rose louder and louder and drowned the other out.
Sheriff Nichols slipped his arm through Blake's.
"I guess you're going to come with me," he said.
"I am ready," was Blake's response.
He turned about to Katherine.
"You deserved to win," he said quietly. "Thank you. Good-by."
"Good-by," said she.
The sheriff drew him away. Katherine, panting, leaning heavily against a pillar of the porch, watched the pair go down the steps--watched the great crowd part before them--watched them march through this human alley-way, lighted by smoking campaign torches--watched them till they had passed into the darkness in the direction of the jail. Then she dizzily reached out and caught Old Hosie's arm.
"Help me home," she said weakly. "I--I feel sick."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE END OF THE BEGINNING