And so these people flocked to the burning--they who had helped lynch before--the negro-haters, who had never owned a negro and had no sympathy--no sentiment for them. It is they who lynch in the South, who lynch and defy the law.

The great mill was in ruins--its tall black smokestacks alone stood amid its smoking, twisted ma.s.s of steel and ashes--a rough, blackened, but fitting monument of its own infamy.

They gathered around it--the disorderly, the vicious, the lynchers of the Tennessee Valley.

Fitful flashes of flame now and then burst out amid the ruins, silhouetting the shadows of the lynchers into fierce giant forms with frenzied faces from which came first murmurs and finally shouts of:

"_Lynch her! Lynch her!_"

Above, in the still air of the night, yet hung the pall of the black smoke-cloud, from whose heart had come the torch which had cost capital its money, and the mill people their living.

They were not long acting. Mammy Maria had flown to the little cottage--a crazy, hysterical creature--a wreck of herself--over-worked in body and mind, and frenzied between the deed and the promptings of a blind superst.i.tious religion.

Lily hung to her neck sobbing, and the old woman in her pitiful fright was brought back partly to reason in the great love of her life for the little child. Even in her feebleness she was soothing her pet.

There were oaths, curses and trampling of many feet as they rushed in and seized her. Lily, screaming, was held by rough arms while they dragged the old nurse away.

Into a wood nearby they took her, the rope was thrown over a limb, the noose placed around her neck.

"Pray, you old witch--we will give you five minutes to pray."

The old woman fell on her knees, but instead of praying for herself, she prayed for her executioners.

They jeered--they laughed. One struck her with a stick, but she only prayed for them the more.

"String her up," they shouted--"her time's up!"

"Stand back there!"

The words rang out even above the noise of the crowd. Then a man, with the long blue deadly barrel of the Colt forty-four, pushed his way through them--his face pale, his fine mouth set firm and close, and the splendid courage of many generations of Conways shining in his eyes.

"_Stand back!_--" and he said it in the old commanding way--the old way which courage has ever had in the crises of the world.

"O Ma.r.s.e Ned!--I knowed you'd come!"

He had cut the rope and the old woman sat on the ground clasping his feet.

For a moment he stood over her, his pale calm face showing the splendor of determination in the glory of his manhood restored. For a moment the very beauty of it stopped them--this man, this former sot and drunkard, this old soldier arising from the ashes of his buried past, a beautiful statue of courage cut out of the marble of manhood.

The moral beauty of it--this man defending with his life the old negro--struck even through the swine of them.

They ceased, and a silence fell, so painful that it hurt in its very uncanniness.

Then Edward Conway said very clearly, very slowly, but with a fitful nervous ring in his voice: "Go back to your homes! Would you hang this poor old woman without a trial? Can you not see that she has lost her mind and is not responsible for her acts? Let the law decide. Shall not her life of unselfishness and good deeds be put against this one insane act of her old age? Go back to your homes!

Some of you are my friends, some my neighbors--I ask you for her but a fair trial before the law."

They listened for a moment and then burst into jeers, hoots, and hisses:

"Hang her, now! That's the way all lawyers talk!"

And one shouted above the rest: "He's put up a plea of insanity a-ready. Hang her, now!"

Edward Conway flashed hot through his paleness and he placed himself before the bowed and moaning form while the crowd in front of him surged and shouted and called for a rope.

He felt some one touch his arm and turned to find the sheriff by his side--one of those disreputables who infested the South after the war, holding office by the votes of the negroes.

"Better let 'em have her,--it ain't worth the while. You'll hafter kill, or be killed."

"You scallawag!" said Conway, now purple with anger--"is that the way you respect your sworn oath? And you have been here and seen all this and not raised your hand?"

"Do you think I'm fool enuff to tackle that crowd of hillbillies?

They've got the devil in them--fur they've got a devil leadin'

'em--Jud Carpenter. Better let 'em have her--they'll kill you. We've got a good excuse--overpowered--don't you see?"

"Overpowered? That's the way all cowards talk," said Conway. "Do one thing for me," he said quickly--"tell them you have appointed me your deputy. If you do not--I'll fall back on the law of riots and appoint myself."

"Gentlemen," said the sheriff, turning to the crowd, and speaking half-shamedly--"Gentlemen, it's better an' I hopes you all will go home. We don't wanter hurt n.o.body. I app'ints Major Conway my deputy to take the prisoner to jail. Now the blood be on yo' own heads.

I've sed my say."

A perfect storm of jeers met this. They surged forward to seize her, while the sheriff half frightened, half undecided, got behind Conway and said:--"It's up to you--I've done all I cu'd."

"Go back to your homes, men"--shouted Conway--"I am the sheriff here now, and I swear to you by the living G.o.d it means I am a Conway again, and the man who lays a hand on this old woman is as good as dead in his tracks!"

For an instant they surged around him cursing and shouting; but he stood up straight and terribly silent; only his keen grey eyes glanced down to the barrel of his pistol and he stood nervously fingering the small blue hammer with his thumb and measuring the distance between himself and the nearest ruffian who stood on the outskirts of the mob shaking a pistol in Conway's face and shouting: "Come on, men, we'll lynch her anyway!"

Then Conway acted quickly. He spoke a few words to the old nurse, and as she backed off into the nearby wood, he covered the retreat. To his relief he saw that the sheriff, now thoroughly ashamed, had hold of the prisoner and was helping her along.

In the edge of the wood he felt safe--with the trees at his back.

And he took courage as he heard the sheriff say:

"If you kin hold 'em a little longer I'll soon have my buggy here and we'll beat 'em to the jail."

But the mob guessed his plans, and the man who had been most insolent in the front of the mob--a long-haired, narrow-chested mountaineer--rushed up viciously.

Conway saw the gleam of his pistol as the man aimed and fired at the prisoner. Instinctively he struck at the weapon and the ball intended for the prisoner crushed spitefully into his left shoulder. He reeled and the grim light of an aroused Conway flashed in his eyes as he recovered himself, for a moment, shocked, blinded. Then he heard some one say, as he felt the blood trickling down his arm and hand:

"Ma.r.s.e Ned! Oh, an' for po' ole Zion! Don't risk yo' life--let 'em take me!"

Dimly he saw the mob rushing up; vaguely it came to him that it was kill or be killed. Vaguely, too, that it was the law--his law--and every other man's law--against lawlessness. Hazily, that he was the law--its representative, its defender, and then clear as the blue barrel in his hand,--all the dimness and uncertainty gone,--it came to him, that thing that made him say: "I am a Conway again!"

Then his pistol leaped from the shadow by his side to the gray light in front, and the man who had fired and was again taking aim at the old woman died in his tracks with his mouth twisted forever into the shape of an unspoken curse.

It was enough. Stricken, paralyzed, they fell back before such courage--and Conway found himself backing off into the woods, covering the retreat of the prisoner. Then afterward he felt the motion of buggy wheels, and of a galloping drive, and the jail, and he in the sheriff's room, the old prisoner safe for the time.

CHAPTER XXIII

DIED FOR THE LAW