“You loathe the man who takes the blood of his fellow-man, and you're right so to do. It matters nothing to you that the murdered man may have been a worse man than the murderer. You're right there too. You look to the motive that inspired the crime. Is it greed or revenge? Then you say, 'This man must die.' God grant that such horror of murder may survive among us.” There was a murmur of assent.
“But it is possible to kill without drawing blood. We may be murderers and never suspect the awfulness of our crime. To wither with suspicion, to blast with scorn, to dog with cruel hints, to torture with hard looks',—this is to kill without blood. Did you ever think of it? There are worse hangmen than ever stood on the gallows.”
“Ay, but he's shappin' to hang hissel',” muttered Matthew Branthwaite. And there was some inaudible muttering among the others.
“I know what you mean,” Ralph continued. “That the guilty man whom the law cannot touch is rightly brought under the ban of his fellows. Yes, it is Heaven's justice.”
Sim crept closer to Ralph, and trembled perceptibly.
“Men, hearken again,” said Ralph. “You know I've spoken up for Sim,” and he put his great arm about the tailor's shoulders; “but you don't know that I have never asked him, and he has never said whether he is innocent or not. The guilty man may be in this room, and he may not be Simeon Stagg. But if he were my own brother—my own father—”
Old Matthew's pipe had gone out; he was puffing at the dead shaft. Sim rose up; his look of abject misery had given place to a look of defiance; he stamped on the floor.
“Let me go; let me go,” he cried.
Robbie Anderson came up and took him by the hand; but Sim's brain seemed rent in twain, and in a burst of hysterical passion he fell back into his seat, and buried his head in his breast.
“He'll be hanged with the foulest collier yet,” growled one of the men. It was Joe Garth again. He was silenced once more. The others had begun to relent.