The ample lady folded her fat, middle-aged hands on the edge of the table, and eyed her husband with bland displeasure. “Judge Campbell!” she uttered, and her lips shut wide and firm. She would restrain herself, if possible.
“Well, my dear?”
“You ask me that. You pretend ignorance of that disgraceful scene. Who was it said to me right in the street that he disapproved of lynching? I ask you, judge, who was it right there at the jail—”
“Oh!” said the enlightened judge.
“—Right at the left-hand side of the door of the jail in this town of Siskiyou, who was it got that trembling boy safe inside from those yelling fiends and talked to the crowd on a barrel of number ten nails, and made those wicked men stop and go home?”
“Amanda, I believe I recognize myself.”
“I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they’ve caught the other one, and he’ll be up with the sheriff on to-night’s train, and I suppose they’ll lynch him now!”
“There’s not the slightest danger,” said the judge. “The town wants them to have a fair trial. It was natural that immediately after such an atrocious act—”
“Those poor boys had never murdered anybody before in their lives,” interrupted Amanda.
“But they did murder Montgomery, you will admit.”