The faces seemed to move in unison as if they were painted upon a single canvas and the canvas had been suddenly jerked by an unseen hand. They became audible by an intake of the breath. “I found him,” Carmel said, “close by the Lakeside Hotel.... Since yesterday I have been a prisoner in the Lakeside Hotel, I and Evan Pell.... I went to find him. I found Sheriff Churchill; I saw five great trucks unload in the hotel yard, and those trucks were carrying whisky from the other side of the border.... It was whisky, men of Gibeon, which killed Sheriff Churchill. It was the men who are trafficking in liquor who murdered him.... I know their names. I have seen them and been their prisoner.... At this moment Evan Pell, locked in a room of that unspeakable place, is in danger of his life. He is injured, cannot escape nor defend himself. Yet he made it possible for me to escape and to come to you for help....” Again she paused. “I could not go to the law because the law does not belong to the people of Gibeon. It has been bought and paid for. It is owned by criminals and by murderers.... We have a new sheriff.... That man’s hands are red with the blood of the man whose place he fills.... So I have come to you, for there is no other law in Gibeon to-night than yourselves.” There had been no movement, no sound, only that tense, fateful silence. “Will you permit this thing? Will you continue to allow your town and your county to rest under this dreadful thing? You can stop it to-night. You can wipe it out forever.... Let me tell you what I know.” She spoke rapidly, eloquently. In that moment she was no longer a young woman, but a leader, a prophet, one sent to deliver a message, and she delivered it fittingly. Her words descended upon those upturned faces, compelling belief. There could be no doubt.... She described the plot against herself as Bangs had recited it tauntingly--how she was to have been made a thing to scorn and to turn aside from; how that part of her which was more valuable to her than life itself was to have been murdered. At the recital the faces moved again, became audible again in a murmur which held kinship with a snarl.... Gibeon was awakening. Point by point, fact by fact, she drove home to them the conditions among which they had been living, but one name she withheld until the moment should come for its utterance.... She described the activities of the whisky smugglers, the workings of their organization, its power--the intelligence which directed it. “Will you endure this, men of Gibeon?... No time may be lost. At this instant a man stands under the shadow of death! What are you going to do? Will you let him die?” In the hall a man arose. “What is the name of this man--the man who is to blame for all this?” he demanded. “His name,” said Carmel, “is Abner Fownes!”