"Take 'em on, boys," called the captain, whose face had paled a little,
though he seemed as cool as ever.

And the boys started, dragging the three struggling prisoners, and the
crowd, growing angrier and angrier, pressed close behind, a hundred of
them, led by the farmer himself, a giant in size, and beside himself
with rage and humiliation. Once he broke through the guard line and was
pushed back. Knives and pistols began to flash now everywhere, and loud
threats and curses rose on all sides--the men should not be taken to
jail. The sergeant, dragging Sturgeon, looked up into the blazing eyes
of a girl on the sidewalk, Sturgeon's sister--the maid from Lee. The
sergeant groaned. Logan gave some order just then to the Infant, who
ran ahead, and by the time the Guard with the prisoners had backed to a
corner there were two lines of Guards drawn across the street. The first
line let the prisoners and their captors through, closed up behind, and
backed slowly towards the corner, where it meant to stand.

It was very exciting there. Winchesters and shotguns protruded from the
line threateningly, but the mob came on as though it were going to press
through, and determined faces blenched with excitement, but not with
fear. A moment later, the little colonel and the Guards on either side
of him were jabbing at men with cocked Winchesters. At that moment it
would have needed but one shot to ring out to have started an awful
carnage; but not yet was there a man in the mob--and that is the trouble
with mobs--who seemed willing to make a sacrifice of himself that the
others might gain their end. For one moment they halted, cursing and
waving; their pistols, preparing for a charge; and in that crucial
moment the tutor from New England came like a thunderbolt to the rescue.
Shrieks of terror from children, shrieks of outraged modesty from women,
rent the air down the street where the huddled crowd was rushing right