"That's strange," remarked Habersham, clearly surprised at Griswold's vigorous tone. "I called on the governor in his office at Columbia only ten days ago, and he put me off. He said he had to prepare an address to deliver before the South Carolina Political Reform Association, and he couldn't take up the Appleweight case; and I called on Bosworth, the attorney-general, and he grew furiously angry, and said I was guilty of the gravest malfeasance in not having brought those men to book long ago. When I suggested that he connive with the governor toward removing our sheriff, he declared that the governor was a coward. He seemed anxious to put the governor in a hole, though why he should take that attitude I can't make out, as it has been generally understood that Governor Osborne's personal friendliness for him secured his nomination and election to the attorney-generalship, and I have heard that he is engaged to the governor's oldest daughter."
"He is a contemptible hound," replied Griswold with feeling, "and at the proper time we shall deal with him; but it is of more importance just now to make Appleweight a prisoner in North Carolina. If he's arrested over there, that lets us out; and if the North Carolina authorities won't arrest their own criminals we'll go over into Dilwell County and show them how to be good. The man's got to be locked up, and he'd look much better in a North Carolina jail, under all the circumstances."
"That's good in theory, but how do you justify it in law?"
"Oh, that's the merest matter of formulæ! My dear Habersham, all the usual processes of law go down before emergencies!"
The airiness of Griswold's tone caused the prosecutor to laugh, for this was not the sober associate professor of admiralty whose lectures he had sat under at the University of Virginia, but a different person, whose new attitude toward the law and its enforcement shocked him immeasurably.
"You seem to be going in for pretty loose interpretations, and if that plaster bust of John Marshall up there falls from the shelf, you need not be surprised," and Habersham still laughed. "I might be impudent and cite you against yourself!"
"That would constitute contempt of court, and I can not just now spare your services long enough for you to serve a jail sentence. Go on now, and tell me what you have done and what you propose."
"Well, as I told you over the telephone, we hear a great deal about Appleweight and his crowd, but we never hear much of their enemies, who are, nevertheless, of the same general stock, and equally determined when aroused. Ten of these men I have quietly called to meet at my farm out here a few miles from town, on Thursday night. They come from different points over the country, and we'll have a small but grim posse that will be ready for business. You may not know it, but the Appleweights are most religious. Appleweight himself boasts that he never misses church on Sunday. He goes also to the mid-week service on Thursday night, so I have learned, and thereby hangs our opportunity. Mount Nebo Church lies off here toward the north. It's a lonely point in itself, though it's the spiritual center and rendezvous for a wide area. If Appleweight can be taken at all, that's the place, and I'm willing to make the trial. Whether to stampede the church and make a fight, or seize him alone as he approaches the place, is a question for discussion with the boys I have engaged to go into the game. How does it strike you?"
"First rate. Ten good men ought to be enough; but if it comes down to numbers, the state militia can be brought into use. The South Carolina National Guard is in camp, and we can have a regiment quick enough, if I ask it."
Habersham whistled.