“He is a Northern man. But that is not against him. If this were a case where leniency were possible, it should count for him, as indicating an ignorance of the gravity of conditions which confront us here, every day and all the time. If he were my own brother, I would still demand his death. “Lest he should think my attitude dictated by any lingering sectional prejudice, I may tell him what you all know--you people among whom I have lived for thirty years--that I am a Northern man myself. “The negro who was lynched to-day might never have committed the crime he did had not the wild, disturbing dream of equality been stirring in his brain. Every speech, every look, every action which encourages that idea is a crime. In this county, where the blacks outnumber us, we must either rule as masters or be submerged. “This man is still believed by the negroes to possess some miraculous power. He is therefore doubly dangerous. As a sharp warning to them he must die. His death will do more toward ending the trouble he has prepared than the death of a dozen negroes. “And as God is my witness, I speak and act not through passion, but from the dictates of conscience.” He meant it, Grimes did. And when he set down they was a hush. And then Will, the chairman, begun to call the roll. I never been much of a person to have bad dreams or nightmares or things like that. But ever since that night in that schoolhouse, if I do have a nightmare, it takes the shape of that roll being called. Every word was like a spade grating and gritting in damp gravel when a grave is dug. It sounded so to me. “Samuel Palmour, how do you vote?” that chairman would say. Samuel Palmour, or whoever it was, would hist himself to his feet, and he would say something like this: “Death.” He wouldn't say it joyous. He wouldn't say it mad. He would be pale when he said it, mebby--and mebby trembling. But he would say it like it was a duty he had to do, that couldn't be got out of. That there trial had lasted so long they wasn't hot blood left in nobody jest then--only cold blood, and determination and duty and principle. “Buck Hightower,” says the chairman, “how do you vote?” “Death,” says Buck; “death for the man. But say, can't we jest _lick_ the kid and turn him loose?” And so it went, up one side the room and down the other. Grimes had showed 'em all their duty. Not but what they had intended to do it before Grimes spoke. But he had put it in such a way they seen it was something with even _more_ principle to it than they had thought it was before. “Billy Harden,” says the chairman, “how do you vote?” Billy was the last of the bunch. And most had voted fur death. Billy, he opened his mouth and he squared himself away to orate some. But jest as he done so, the door opened and Old Daddy Withers stepped in. He had been gone so long I had plumb forgot him. Right behind him was a tall, spare feller, with black eyes and straight iron-gray hair.