There was silence after Pole's voice died away. Then Garner rapped on the table with his small hand and tossed back the long, thick hair from his massive brow.
“You may as well know the truth, Carson,” he said, calmly. “We put it to a vote just before you came, and we all agreed that we would—well, try to bring you round to some sort of resignation; try to get you to throw it off your mind and stop worrying.”
To their surprise Carson took up the lamp and rose. “Wait a moment,” he said, and with the lamp in hand he crossed the elevated part of the floor and went down the steps into the cellar. They were left in darkness for a moment, the rays of the lamp flashing now only on the front wall and door of the long building.
“Huh, there ain't anybody hiding there!” Blackburn cautiously called out. “I looked through the full length of it, turned over every box and barrel, before you came. I wasn't going to run any risk of having a stray tramp in a caucus like this.”
There was some fixed quality in Dwight's drawn face as he emerged, carrying the lamp before him, ascended the steps, and again took his place at the table.
“You thought somebody might be hiding there,” the store-keeper said; “but I was careful to—”
“No, it wasn't that,” Carson said. “I was wondering—I was trying to think—”
He paused as if submerged in thought, and Garner turned upon him almost sternly. He had never before used quite such a harsh tone to his partner.
“You've gone far enough, Carson,” he said. “There are limits even to the deepest friendship. You can't ask your best friends to make their wives widows and their children orphans in a blind effort to save the neck of one miserable negro, even if he's as innocent as the angels in heaven. As for yourself, your heroism has almost led you into a cesspool of reckless absurdity. You have let that old man and woman up there, and Miss—that old man and woman, anyway—work on your sympathies till you have lost your usual judgment. I'm your friend and—”
“Stop! Wait!” Carson stood up, his hands on the edge of the table, the lamp beneath him throwing his mobile face into the shadow of his firm, massive jaw. “Stop!” he repeated. “You say you have given up. Boys, I can't. I tell you I can't. I simply can't let them kill that boy. Every nerve in my body, every pulsation of my soul screams out against it. I have set my heart on averting this horror. Ten years ago I could have gone to my bed and slept peacefully, as many good citizens of this town will to-night, under the knowledge that the verdict of mob law was to be executed, but in the handling of this case I've had a new birth. There is no God in heaven if—I say if—He has not made it possible for the mind and will of man to prevent this horror. There must be a way; there is a way, and if I could put my ideas into your brains to-night—my faith and confidence into your souls—we'd prevent this calamity and set an example for our fellows to follow in future.”