Chapter 22

CHAPTER XXII.

THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, a-
whooping and raging like Injuns, and everything
had to clear the way or get run over and tromped to
mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling
it ahead of the mob, screaming and trying to get out
of the way; and every window along the road was full
of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every
tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence;
and as soon as the mob would get nearly to them they
would break and skaddle back out of reach. Lots of
the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared
most to death.

They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as
thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't
hear yourself think for the noise. It was a little
twenty-foot yard. Some sung out "Tear down the
fence! tear down the fence!" Then there was a
racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, and down
she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to
roll in like a wave.

Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his
little front porch, with a double-barrel gun in his hand,
and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm and deliberate, not
saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave
sucked back.

Sherburn never said a word -- just stood there, look-
ing down. The stillness was awful creepy and uncom-
fortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd;
and wherever it struck the people tried a little to out-
gaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes
and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort
of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that
makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's
got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful:

"The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It's amusing.
The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to
lynch a MAN! Because you're brave enough to tar and
feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along
here, did that make you think you had grit enough to
lay your hands on a MAN? Why, a MAN'S safe in the
hands of ten thousand of your kind -- as long as it's
daytime and you're not behind him.

"Do I know you? I know you clear through
was born and raised in the South, and I've lived in the
North; so I know the average all around. The
average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody
walk over him that wants to, and goes home and prays
for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man
all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in the
daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call
you a brave people so much that you think you are
braver than any other people -- whereas you're just AS
brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang
murderers?