“What a pity he ever sent for his father! but who could have foreseen this?” said the doctor, sadly. McClintock shook his head.
“I can't believe the old man killed Ryder in cold blood. Why, he's as gentle as a lamb.”
As they left the town, off to the right in a field they saw a bareheaded woman racing after her two runaway sons, and then the distant shouts of men, mingled with the shrill cries of boys, reached their ears. The doctor shook out his reins and plied his whip.
“What if we are too late!” he said.
For answer McClintock swore. He was fearing that himself.
Two minutes later and they were up with the rear of the mob, where it straggled along on foot, sweating and dusty and hoarsely articulate. A little farther on and it was lost to sight in a thicketed dip of the road. Out of this black shadow buggy after buggy flashed to show in the red dusk that lay on the treeless hill-side beyond. On the mob's either flank, but keeping well out of the reach of their elders, slunk and skulked the village urchins.
“Looks as if all Antioch was here to-night,” commented McClintock, grimly.
“So much the better for us; surely they are not all gone mad,” answered the doctor.
“I wouldn't give a button for his chances.”
The doctor drove recklessly into the crowd, which scattered to the right and left.