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double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate,

not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word -- just stood there, looking down. The stillness

was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the

crowd; and wherever it struck, the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they

couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sher-

burn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel

like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful:

"The idea of you lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you think-

ing you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you're brave enough to tar

and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make

you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe

in the hands of ten thousand of your kind -- as long as it's day-time and you're not

behind him. ssssssssss

"Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the

South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The

average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that

wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South

one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men, in the day-time, and

robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think

you are braver than any other people -- whereas you're just as brave, and no braver.

Why don't your juries hang murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends

will shoot them in the back, in the dark -- and it's just what they would do.

"So they always acquit; and then a man goes in the night, with a hundred

masked cowards at his back, and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that you

didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is that you didn't

come in the dark, and fetch your masks. You brought part of a man -- Buck

Harkness, there -- and if you hadn't had him to start you, you'd a taken it out in

blowing. ssssssssss

"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger.

You don't like trouble and danger. But if only half a man -- like Buck Hark-

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