A sycamore standing near offers a horizontal limb—good enough for a gallows.
The vote is taken viva voce.
Eighty out of the hundred jurors express their opinion: that Maurice Gerald must die. His hour appears to have come.
And yet the sentence is not carried into execution. The rope is suffered to lie guileless on the grass. No one seems willing to lay hold of it!
Why that hanging back, as if the thong of horse-hide was a venomous snake, that none dares to touch?
The majority—the plurality, to use a true Western word—has pronounced the sentence of death; some strengthening it with rude, even blasphemous, speech. Why is it not carried out?
Why? For want of that unanimity, that stimulates to immediate action—for want of the proofs to produce it.
There is a minority not satisfied—that with less noise, but equally earnest emphasis, have answered “No.”
It is this that has caused a suspension of the violent proceedings.
Among this minority is Judge Lynch himself—Sam Manly, the Chief of the Regulators. He has not yet passed sentence; or even signified his acceptance of the acclamatory verdict.