“She ain’t here,” said a voice from the crowd. “God help Martha Brackett!” added another. But there was a woman there, poorly dressed, pale and shrunken from recent illness, scanning, with dreading eyes, the lists of dead, wounded, missing, with which columns of the paper some one had given her were filled. In the midst of the confusion of voices following the announcement of Brackett’s heroic charge and fall, there was a shrill scream, the paper fell from the nerveless hand of the woman in poor clothes, and she fell, white and insensible, to the floor. “She saw her boy’s name in the list of killed,” said one who had been looking over her shoulder as she read. Others lifted the poor, limp body and carried the stricken woman into the fresh air to await her sad return to consciousness. And all this time Rhett Bannister, standing defiantly in his corner, holding his peace, watching the grim tragedies that were being enacted around him, dread echoes of that mighty tragedy of battle, felt the surging tide of indignation rising higher and higher in his breast, until, at last, unable longer to keep rein on his tongue, he cried out:-- “I charge Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition leaders at Washington with the death of George Brackett and the murder of Jennie Lebarrow’s son!” Then, Sergeant Goodman, home on furlough, wounded, strode forth and grasped the collar of Bannister’s coat, and before he could shake himself free, or defend himself in any way, others had seized his hands, and bound his wrists together behind his back, and then they led him forth, helpless, mute with unspeakable rage. “What shall we do with him?” asked one. “Rush him to the platform!” cried another. And almost before he knew it, Bannister had been tossed up on the speaker’s stand and thrown into a chair, and was being held there, an object of execration to the crowd that surrounded him. He was not cowed or frightened. But he was dumb with indignation that his rights and his person had been so shamelessly outraged. White-faced, hatless, with torn coat and disheveled hair, he sat there breathing hate and looking defiance at his captors and tormentors. “If this had been in some countries,” said the young orator, looking scornfully down on him, “you would now be dangling at the end of a rope thrown over the limb of that big maple yonder, and willing hands would be pulling you into eternity.” “And if this were in some communities,” retorted Bannister, “you would be tried and convicted and legally hanged for inciting an ignorant and brutal populace to riot and murder.” A tall, dignified, white-haired old gentleman, who had been scribbling on a pad, now advanced to the edge of the platform, holding a sheet of paper in one hand, and resting the other easily in the bosom of his partly buttoned frock-coat. “Mr. Chairman,” he said impressively, “I rise to offer the following resolution, which I hope will be adopted without a dissenting voice.