The words rang out even above the noise of the crowd. Then a man, with the long blue deadly barrel of the Colt forty-four, pushed his way through them—his face pale, his fine mouth set firm and close, and the splendid courage of many generations of Conways shining in his eyes.
“Stand back!—” and he said it in the old commanding way—the old way which courage has ever had in the crises of the world.
“O Marse Ned!—I knowed you'd come!”
He had cut the rope and the old woman sat on the ground clasping his feet.
For a moment he stood over her, his pale calm face showing the splendor of determination in the glory of his manhood restored. For a moment the very beauty of it stopped them—this man, this former sot and drunkard, this old soldier arising from the ashes of his buried past, a beautiful statue of courage cut out of the marble of manhood. The moral beauty of it—this man defending with his life the old negro—struck even through the swine of them.
They ceased, and a silence fell, so painful that it hurt in its very uncanniness.
Then Edward Conway said very clearly, very slowly, but with a fitful nervous ring in his voice: “Go back to your homes! Would you hang this poor old woman without a trial? Can you not see that she has lost her mind and is not responsible for her acts? Let the law decide. Shall not her life of unselfishness and good deeds be put against this one insane act of her old age? Go back to your homes! Some of you are my friends, some my neighbors—I ask you for her but a fair trial before the law.”
They listened for a moment and then burst into jeers, hoots, and hisses:
“Hang her, now! That's the way all lawyers talk!”
And one shouted above the rest: “He's put up a plea of insanity a-ready. Hang her, now!”