She felt that she had won her audience, that she had turned them back to lawful measures, when suddenly there was a roar of “Blake! Blake!”—the stilled crowd became again a mob—and she saw that the focus of their gaze had shifted from her to a point behind her. Looking about, she saw that the door had opened, and that Blake, pale and erect, was standing in the doorway. The crowd tried to surge forward, but the front ranks, out of their new and but half-comprehended respect for Katherine, stood like a wall against the charge that would have overwhelmed her.
Blake moved forward to her side.
“I should like to speak to them, if I can,” he said quietly.
Katherine held up her hand for silence. The mob hissed and cursed him, and tried to break through the human fortification of the front ranks. Through it all Blake stood silent, pale, without motion. Katherine, her hand still upraised, continued to cry out for silence; and after a time the uproar began in a measure to diminish.
Katherine took quick advantage of the lull.
“Gentlemen,” she called out, “won’t you please give Mr. Blake just a word!”
Cries that they should give him a chance to speak ran through the crowd, and thus abjured by its own members the mob quieted yet further. While they were subsiding into order Blake looked steadily out upon this sea of hostile faces. Katherine watched him breathlessly, wondering what he was about to say. It swept in upon her, with a sudden catching of the throat, that he made a fine figure standing there so straight, so white, with so little sign of fear; and despite what the man had done, again some of her old admiration for him thrilled through her, and with it an infinite pang of regret for what he might have been.
At length there was moderate order, and Blake began to speak. “Gentlemen, I do not wish to plead for myself,” he said quietly, yet in his far-carrying voice. “What I have done is beyond your forgiveness. I merely desire to say that I am guilty; to say that I am here to give myself into your hands. Do with me as you think best. If you prefer immediate action, I shall go with you without resistance. If you wish to let the law take its course, then”—here he made a slight gesture toward Jim Nichols, who stood beside him—“then I shall give myself into the hands of the sheriff. I await your choice.”
With that he paused. A perfect hush had fallen on the crowd. This man who had dominated them in the days of his glory, dominated them for at least a flickering moment in this the hour of his fall. For that brief moment all were under the spell of their habit to honour him, the spell of his natural dignity, the spell of his direct words.
Then the spell was over. The storm broke loose again. There were cries for immediate action, and counter cries in favour of the law. The two cries battled with each other. For a space there was doubt as to which was the stronger. Then that for the law rose louder and louder and drowned the other out.