He looked around him—but there was no solution. Then he felt that death was near, for the mob now hated him more than they did the prisoner. They seemed to have forgotten her, for all their cry now was:
“Kill Conway! Kill the man who murdered our people!”
In ten minutes they were ready to attack again, but looking up they saw a strange sight.
Help had come to Conway. On one side of him stood the old Cottontown preacher, his white hair reflecting back the light from the bonfires and torches in front—lighting up a face which now seemed to have lost all of its kindly humor in the crisis that was there. He was unarmed, but he stood calm and with a courage that was more of sorrow than of anger.
By him stood the village blacksmith, a man with the wild light of an old, untamed joy gleaming in his eyes—a cruel, dangerous light—the eyes of a caged tiger turned loose at last, and yearning for the blood of the thing which had caged him.
And by him in quiet bravery, commanding, directing, stood the tall figure of the Captain of Artillery.
When Richard Travis saw him, a cruel smile deepened in his eyes. “I am dying myself,” it said—“why not kill him?”
Then he shuddered with the hatred of the terrible thing that had come into his heart—the thing that made him do its bidding, as if he were a puppet, and overthrew all the good he had gathered there, that terrible night, as the angels were driven from Paradise. And yet, how it ruled him, how it drove him on!
“Jim—Jim,” he whispered as he bent over his horse's neck—“Jim—my repeating rifle over the library door—quick—it carries true and far!”
As Jim sped away his master was silent again. He thought of the nobility of the things he had done that night—the touch of God that had come over him in making him save Helen—the beautiful dreams he had had. He thought of it all—and then—here—now—murdering the man whose life carried with it the life, the love of—