Here, against the nearermost bank, the foreigners were clumped in a tight, compact black huddle, all scared, but not so badly scared that they would not fight. Yonder, across the snow, through the gap where a side street debouched at a gentle slope into the hollow, the mob advanced—men and half-grown boys—to the number of perhaps four hundred, coming to get the man who had stabbed Beaver Yancy and string him up on the spot—and maybe to get a few of his friends and string them up as an added warning to all Dagos. They came on and came on until a space of not more than seventy-five yards separated the mob and the mob's prospective victims. From the advancing mass a growling of many voices rose. Rampant, unloosed mischief was in the sound.
Somebody who was drunk yelled out shrill profanity and then laughed a maudlin laugh. The group against the bank kept silent. Theirs was the silence of a grim and desperate resolution. Their only shelter had been fired over their heads; they were beleaguered and ringed about with enemies; they had nowhere to run for safety, even had they been minded to run. So they would fight. They made ready with their weapons of defence—such weapons as they had.
A man who appeared to hold some manner of leadership over the rest advanced a step from the front row of them. In his hand he held an old-fashioned cap-and-ball pistol at full cock. He raised his right arm and sighted along the levelled barrel at a spot midway between him and the oncoming crowd. Plainly he meant to fire when the first of his foes crossed an imaginary line. He squinted up his-eye, taking a careful aim; and he let his trigger finger slip gently inside the trigger guard—but he never fired.
On top of the hill, almost above his head, a bugle blared out. A fife and a drum cut in, playing something jiggy and brisk; and over the crest and down into the flat, two by two, marched a little column of old men, following after a small silken flag which flicked and whispered in the wind, and led by a short, round-bodied commander, who held by the hand a little briskly trotting figure of a child. Tony Wolfe Tone had grown too heavy for the judge to carry him all the way.
Out across the narrow space between the closing-in mob and the closed-in foreigners the marchers passed, their feet sinking ankle-deep into the crusted snow. Their leader gave a command; the music broke off and they spread out in single file, taking station, five feet apart from one another, so that between the two hostile groups a living hedge was interposed. And so they stood, with their hands down at their sides, some facing to the west, where the Italians were herded together, some facing toward the east, where the would-be lynchers, stricken with a great amazement, had come to a dead stand.
Judge Priest, still holding little Tony Wolfe Tone's small mittened hand fast in his, spoke up, addressing the mob. His familiar figure was outlined against the burning barracks beyond him and behind him. His familiar whiny voice he lifted to so high a pitch that every man and boy there heard him.
“Feller citizens,” he stated, “this is part of Forrest's Cavalry you see here. We done soldierin' oncet and we've turned soldiers ag'in; but we ain't armed—none of us. We've only got our bare hands. Ef you come on we can't stop you with guns; but we ain't agoin' to budge, and ef you start shootin' you'll shorely git some of us. So ez a personal favour to me and these other gentlemen, I'd like to ast you jest to stand still where you are and not to shoot till after you see what we're fixrin' to try to do. That's agreeable to you-all, ain't it? You've got the whole night ahead of you—there's no hurry, is there, boys?”
He did not wait for any answer from anyone. By name he knew a good half of them; by sight he knew the other half. And they all knew him; and they knew Tony Palassi's boy; and they knew Father Minor, who stood at his right hand; and they knew the lame blacksmith and the little bench-legged Jewish merchant, and the rich banker and the poor carpenter, and the leading wholesaler, and all the other old men who stretched away from the judge in an uneven line, like fence posts for a fence that had not been built. They would not shoot yet; and, as though fully convinced in his own mind they would bide where they were until he was done, and relying completely on them to keep their unspoken promise, Judge Priest half-turned his back on the members of the mob and bent over little Tony.
“Little feller,” he said, “you ain't skeered, are you?”
Tony looked up at his friend and shook his head stoutly. Tony was not scared. It was as good as play to Tony—all this was.