dark-browed citizens outside the gaol. There were determined mutterings
among the crowd rather than outspoken anger, but the mob was the more
dangerous on that account. One man in its midst thrust his closed hand
towards the sky, and from his fist dangled a rope. A cry like the
growling of a pack of wolves went up as the mob saw the rope, and they
clamoured at the gates of the gaol. "Lynch him! Gaoler, give up the
keys!" was the cry.

The agitated sheriff knew his duty, but he hesitated to perform it.
Technically, this was a mob--a mob of outlaws; but in reality it was
composed of his fellow-townsmen, his neighbours, his friends--justly
indignant at the commission of an atrocious crime. He might order them
to be fired upon, and the order perhaps would be obeyed. One, two, a
dozen might be killed, and technically again they would have deserved
their fate; yet all that perfectly legal slaughter would be--for what?
To save, for a time only, the worthless life of a wretch who rightly
merited any doom the future might have in store for him. So the sheriff
wrung his hands, bewailed the fact that such a crisis should have
arisen during his term of office, and did nothing; while the clamours
of the mob grew so loud that the trembling prisoner in his cell heard
it, and broke out into a cold sweat when he quickly realised what it
meant. He was to have a dose of justice in the raw.

"What shall I do?" asked the gaoler. "Give up the keys?"

"I don't know what to do," cried the sheriff, despairingly. "Would
there be any use in speaking to them, do you think?"

"Not the slightest."