Late that night Logan became so exhausted with his ravings that he fell asleep. I was just preparing to try to get some rest myself when I heard the tramp of heavy feet coming up the jail stairs.
By the dim light of the one smoky kerosene lamp I saw a crowd of masked men trooping into the corridor. The leaders carried heavy sledge hammers, and with these, having been unable to make the Sheriff give up his keys, they attacked the iron door of Logan's cell.
It quickly fell to pieces before their sturdy blows. Then they broke the murderer's shackles and dragged him, shrieking curses with every breath, down the stairs and out into the street.
They strung him up to a tree, riddled him with bullets, and left his body hanging there in the moonlight in full view of my cell window. This was too much for my overwrought nerves. I threw myself on my couch and wept. Tom Bigelow did his best to console me, but I could not sleep—my head ached and I trembled in every limb.
About an hour later I heard that ominous tramp of feet again! This time the masked men came straight to the door of my cell.
"Is this where that woman is?" a rough voice called.
I cowered in a corner, too frightened to reply. They pounded the door down just as they had Murphy Logan's. A man seized me by the arm and pulled me out, none too gently.
They were going to lynch me—I was convinced of that. With tears streaming down my cheeks I pleaded, as I never had before, that I was innocent of any crime, and begged to be allowed to go back home to my children.
They took me downstairs into the Sheriff's office, where sat a man who seemed to be the leader of the mob.
"So you tried to save Charlie Steele's life, did you?" he said to me.