They had all known that Towers would handle the situation with a triumph of resource, and a subdued murmur of applause and adulation rose from many bewhiskered lips, as the posse withdrew slowly to the threshold over which it had entered.
Then they became deadly quiet, for a voice had spoken from the Virginia door. "Hold on!"
They wheeled and saw a single figure there, unarmed, and hands began going to holsters.
"Virginny and Kaintuck looks right-smart alike ter me," said Bear Cat Stacy with the level voice of one who has long waited his moment and finds it at hand. "Will ye all lay down yore arms, and surrender ther men we wants—or will ye stand siege an' have this pest-house burnt down over yore heads? I'll wait outside for an answer."
The amazement of the moment had held them gripped in tableau as he spoke, but when he stepped swiftly back, a dozen pistols spat and barked at him, and then, louder than the firing, they heard a circle of song—compassing the stockaded building on all sides—a giant chorus that swelled in the frosty air: "Mine Eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord."
Kinnard Towers' self-assurance fell away from him. His hand was unsteady as he raised it and said huskily; "Boys, we needs must fight."
CHAPTER XXVII
T he volume of the singing out there and the flare of the ruddy torches, left no doubt as to the substantial strength of the force which had swept aside such legal technicalities as state jurisdiction.
When Bear Cat had trusted himself so recklessly on the threshold while the opposite door still stood open, the spectral figures with masked faces could have streamed in, wave on wave, to smother out any up-flaming spirit of resistance, but in doing that there would have been hand-to-hand conflict, in which the innocent must pay as heavy and ultimate a penalty as the guilty.
So Turner had withdrawn, and permitted the barring of the doors—though he knew that the structure had the solid strength of square-sawed oak and that the besieged scores were fully armed. Now from the outside he hammered on the massive panels with a rifle butt.