Then it come on
me sudden it was a buckeye I picked up in the woods
in Indiany one day, and I had lost it. I ain't super-
stitious about buckeyes or horse-shoes, but remem-
bering I had lost it somehow made me feel worse.
But Doctor Kirby had a good holt on himself; his
face was a bit redder'n usual, and his eyes was spark-
ling, and he was both eager and watchful. When
Buck Hightower sets down the chairman clears his
throat like he is going to speak. But--
"Just a moment," says Doctor Kirby, getting
on his feet, and taking a step toward the chairman.
And the way he stopped and stood made everybody
look at him. Then he went on:
"Once more," he says, "I call the attention of
every man present to the fact that what the last
speaker proposes is--"
And then he let 'em have that word agin, full in
their faces, to think about--
"MURDER! Merely murder."
He was bound they shouldn't get away from that
word and what it stood fur. And every man there
DID think, too, fur they was another little pause.
And not one of 'em looked at another one fur a
minute. Doctor Kirby leaned forward from the
platform, running his eyes over the crowd, and jest
natcherally shoved that word into the room so hard
with his mind that every mind there had to take it in.
But as he held 'em to it they come a bang from
one of the windows.
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