It was a great fire the mill made, lighting the valley for miles. All Cottontown was there to see it burn, hushed, with set faces, some of anger, some of fear—but all in stricken numbness, knowing that their living was gone.
It was not long before Jud Carpenter was among them, stirring them with the story of how the old negro woman had burned it—for he knew it was she. Indeed, he was soon fully substantiated by others who heard her when she had run home heaping her maledictions on the mill.
Soon among them began the whisper of lynching. As it grew they became bolder and began to shout it: Lynch her!
Jud Carpenter, half drunk and wholly reckless, stood on a stump, and after telling his day's experience with Mammy Maria, her defiance of the mill's laws, her arrogance, her burning of the mill, he shouted that he himself would lead them.
“Lynch her!” they shouted. “Lead us, Jud Carpenter! We will lynch her.”
Some wanted to wait until daylight, but “Lynch her—lynch her now,” was the shout.
The crowd grew denser every moment.
The people of Cottontown, hot and revengeful, now that their living was burned; hill dwellers who sympathized with them, and coming in, were eager for any excitement; the unlawful element which infests every town—all were there, the idle, the ignorant, the vicious.
And a little viciousness goes a long way.