He gave her a look of utter astonishment.
“You needn’t look at me so!” she cried. “He killed that impudent Irishman in self-defence; I know he did!”
“Self-defence! The man was doing nothing but walking peaceably along the street behind him, attending to his own business.”
“Were you alongside? Did you see and hear it all?”
“No; but there were credible witnesses who did; and if the shooting had not been so unprovoked, the bystanders would not have become the furious mob that they instantly did. I tell you, Dora, you had best keep quiet about the whole affair, and, in fact, I think it may be our wisest course to move away to some distant part of the country, where the story will not be likely to follow us.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” she said. “It would be a losing business to sell out our property in Prairieville and go to a new place. ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’ I’ll go home; we’ll start directly, and I’ll let the neighbors see that I don’t feel myself in the least disgraced by what has passed.”
They reached Prairieville in the evening of the same day that Belinda arrived in the vicinity. Early the next morning Mr. Wiley went down-town on some errand. Returning half an hour later, he appeared before his wife with a ghastly and disturbed countenance.
“What are we coming to?” he sighed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. “There was—another lynching—last night; armed, masked men—four wagon loads of them—broke into the jail, took Phelim O’Rourke and hung him to a tree right there alongside of the building; and his body’s swinging there yet, they say. I believe they are about taking it down, however, and home to the old folks. They’ve held an inquest, and the verdict is that he came to his death by the hands of persons unknown.”
“Dreadful!” she cried. “But who did it?”
“Nobody seems to know or wants to know. I’ve told you what the verdict of the coroner was; but it’s said the best citizens of this town and Frederic, Riverside, and Fairfield had a hand in it. You see they knew the law would never hang him, and were determined he should have his deserts; not only to punish him, but to discourage other scoundrels from following his example.”