I couldn't get away from thinking, as he stood there making them take that in, that they was something like a play-actor about him. But he was in earnest, and he would play it to the end, fur he liked the feelings it made circulate through his frame. And they saw he was in earnest. “You'll lynch him, will you?” he says, a kind of passion getting into his voice fur the first time, and his eyes glittering. “You think you will? Well, you _won't_! “You won't because _I_ say _not_. Do you hear? I came here to-night to save him. “You might string _him_ up and not be called to account for it. But how about _me_?” He took a step forward, and, looking from face to face with a dare in his eyes, he went on: “Is there a man among you fool enough to think you could kill Tom Buckner and not pay for it?” He let 'em all think of that for jest another minute before he spoke agin. His face was as white as a piece of paper, and his nostrils was working, but everything else about him was quiet. He looked the master of them all as he stood there, Colonel Tom Buckner did--straight and splendid and keen. And they felt the danger in him, and they felt jest how fur he would go, now he was started. “You didn't want to listen to me a bit ago,” he said. “Now you must. Listen and choose. You can't kill that man unless you kill me too. “_Try it, if you think you can!_” He reached over and took from the teacher's desk the sheet of paper Will had used to check off the name of each man and how he voted. He held it up in front of him and every man looked at it. “You know me,” he says. “You know I do not break my word. And I promise you that unless you do kill me here tonight--yes, as God is my witness, I _threaten_ you--I will spend every dollar I own and every atom of influence I possess to bring each one of you to justice for that man's murder.” They knowed, that crowd did, that killing a man like Colonel Buckner--a leader and a big man in that part of the state--was a different proposition from killing a stranger like Doctor Kirby. The sense of what it would mean to kill Colonel Buckner was sinking into 'em, and showing on their faces. And no one could look at him standing there, with his determination blazing out of him, and not understand that unless they did kill him as well as Doctor Kirby he'd do jest what he said. “I told you,” he said, not raising his voice, but dropping it, and making it somehow come creeping nearer to every one by doing that, “I told you the first white man you lynched would lead to other lynchings. Let me show you what you're up against to-night. “Kill the man and the boy here, and you must kill me. Kill me, and you must kill Old Man Withers, too.” Every one turned toward the door as he mentioned Old Man Withers. He had never been very far into the room.