“As far as I'm concerned, I hope you won't have it done,” said Barrett. “To save your neck, you couldn't summon men that wouldn't be prejudiced agin the nigger, an' if the report went out that we had put a force on at the jail it would only make the mob madder, and make them act quicker. A hundred armed citizens wouldn't stop a lynching gang—not a shot would be fired by white men at white men, so what would be the use?”
“That's what the sheriff thinks exactly, Burt,” Carson replied. “I presume the only thing to do is to treat the arrest as usual. I'm doing all I can to assure the people that there is to be a fair and speedy trial.”
They had reached the top of the stairs and were near Pete's cell, when the jailer turned and asked, in an undertone, “Are you armed?”
“Why, no,” Carson said, in surprise.
“Good Lord! I wouldn't advise you to go inside the cell then. I've known niggers to kill their best friends when they are desperate.”
“I'm not afraid of this one,” Dwight laughed. “I must get inside. I want to know the whole truth, and I can't talk to him through the grating. Is he in the cell on the right?”
“No, the first on the left; it's the only doublebarred one in the jail.”
In one corner of the fairly “well lighted room stood a veritable cage, the sides, top and bottom consisting of heavy steel lattice-work. As the jailer was unlocking the massive door, Carson peered through one of the squares and a most pitiful sight met his eye, for at the sound of the key in the lock Pete, in his tatters and gashed and swollen face, had crouched down on his dingy blanket and remained there quaking in terror.
“Get up!” the jailer ordered, in a not unkindly tone; “it's Carson Dwight to see you.”
At this the negro's face lighted up, his eyes blazed in the sudden flare of relief, and he rose quickly. “Oh, Marse Carson, I was afeared—”