"It would be none the less a murder," said the
pock-marked man, "if you were to be hanged after
a trial in some county court. Society had been
obliged to deny the privilege of committing murder
to the individual and reserve it for the community.
If our communal sense says you should die, the
thing is neither better nor worse than if a sheriff
hanged you."
"I am not to be hanged by a sheriff," says the
doctor, very cool and steady, "because I have com-
mitted no crime. I am not to be killed by you
because you dare not, in spite of all you say, outrage
the law to that extent."
And they looked each other in the eyes so long
and hard that every one else in the schoolhouse
held their breath.
"DARE not?" says the pock-marked man. And
he reached forward slow and took that spider in
his hand, and crushed it there, and wiped his hand
along his pants leg. "Dare not? YES, BUT WE DARE.
The only question for us men here is whether we
dare to let you go free."
"Your defence of lynching," says Doctor Kirby,
"shows that you, at least, are a man who can think.
Tell me what I am accused of?"
And then the trial begun in earnest.
CHAPTER XX
The doctor acted as his own lawyer, and
the pock-marked man, whose name was
Grimes, as the lawyer agin us.
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