But they didn't believe him. Fur it was jest what he would of said if he had been guilty, as they thought him. And then Grimes gets up and says:
"Gentlemen, I demand for this prisoner the penalty of death.
"He has lent himself to a situation calculated to disturb in this county the peaceful domination of the black race by the white.
"He is a Northern man. But that is not against him. If this were a case where leniency were possible, it should count for him, as indicating an ignorance of the gravity of conditions which confront us here, every day and all the time. If he were my own brother, I would still demand his death.
"Lest he should think my attitude dictated by any lingering sectional prejudice, I may tell him what you all know—you people among whom I have lived for thirty years—that I am a Northern man myself.
"The negro who was lynched to-day might never have committed the crime he did had not the wild, disturbing dream of equality been stirring in his brain. Every speech, every look, every action which encourages that idea is a crime. In this county, where the blacks outnumber us, we must either rule as masters or be submerged.
"This man is still believed by the negroes to possess some miraculous power. He is therefore doubly dangerous. As a sharp warning to them he must die. His death will do more toward ending the trouble he has prepared than the death of a dozen negroes.
"And as God is my witness, I speak and act not through passion, but from the dictates of conscience."
He meant it, Grimes did. And when he set down they was a hush. And then Will, the chairman, begun to call the roll.
I never been much of a person to have bad dreams or nightmares or things like that. But ever since that night in that schoolhouse, if I do have a nightmare, it takes the shape of that roll being called. Every word was like a spade grating and gritting in damp gravel when a grave is dug. It sounded so to me.