"Statesmen we give to the world—law-makers, not lawbreakers! Soldiers we give, not midnight marauders and assassins!" (If he borrowed freely from a certain greater Kentucky orator who speaks only with his pen, the Major was unaware of plagiarism.) "Show me the fools who say Kentuckians are lawless? We make our laws as we need them, gentlemen—and we obey them! Perhaps the greatest of our laws is this: 'Never kick a dog when it is down.'" His voice sank to a warm and personal friendliness. "I ask you, gentlemen—is there any dog more down than the negro? It is not his fault that he is here where he is no longer wanted. It is not his fault that he brought with him when he came the ways and the intelligence of the jungle. It is ours, perhaps, that he has kept them. We shall never tame the negro by proving ourselves savages!—My friends, you and I here in Kentucky pride ourselves on breaking our horses and our dogs by means of kindness. Shall we do less for our unfortunate black brother?"
A voice in the crowd remarked, "You can claim kin with him ef you want to, Jedge—I ain't!"
A ripple of laughter greeted this sally, and Joan's tension relaxed. She felt intuitively that a crowd which laughs does not kill.
While he spoke, her father had more than once caught her eye over the heads of the others, urgently, meaningly. Now he nodded to her. Joan suddenly caught the message he was trying to convey.
"He wants us to go to him. Quick, James! Start your engine. Quietly!"
In his nervousness, however, the chauffeur started the car with a jerk, and many faces moved in their direction. The Major turned on the full tide of his voice, and rose to his climax.
"My friends," he asked solemnly, "have you thought to take into your hands the privilege of the Most High, who saith, 'Vengeance is mine'? Perhaps you have called vengeance 'justice'? Even so there is a finer thing than justice. There is mercy. And there is something we may give even greater than mercy—something to which each of us poor souls has a human right. I refer, gentlemen, to the benefit of the doubt.
"Some day every one of us here present—who knows how soon?—must stand before the Judgment Seat, cowering as this wretch is cowering now. And what we dare to ask then will be perhaps not justice, nor even mercy—but simply the benefit of the doubt."
Tears came into Joan's eyes. It seemed to her that for a moment her father had forgotten his purpose there, and was speaking not for another but for himself....
His mind, however, had not left the business in hand. After a slight and telling pause, he said in his ordinary conversational voice, "Now I am going to take this negro with me, gentlemen, if you don't mind. I have at hand a safe conveyance, as you see. I pledge you my word to deliver him in person to the sheriff of this county."