A mob, no matter how deeply inflamed, is always cowardly. This mob was no exception. It crowded up, crowded up, testing authority. It joked with the soldiers, and when it found that the jokes were appreciated, it took further liberties; it jostled the soldiers--good-humouredly. "You don't dare fire," it said, and the soldiers made no reply. "Your guns aren't loaded," it said, and some soldier confessed that they were not. In tender consideration for the feelings of the mob, the officers had ordered the men not to load their rifles. The next step was easy enough; the mob playfully wrenched away a few of the guns, those behind pushed forward--those behind always do push forward, knowing they will not be hurt--and in a moment the whole mob was swarming up the stairs, yelling and cheering. In the court-room, sentence had been passed on Reed and Cato, and the judge had just congratulated the people on "their splendid regard for the law under very trying conditions." Then the mob broke in. A brother of the murdered Hodges, a minister from Texas, rose magnificently to the occasion. With tears streaming down his face, he begged the mob to let the law take its course. "We don't want religion, we want blood," yelled a voice. The mob was now thoroughly stirred; it ceased to hesitate; it was controlled wholly by its emotions. The leaders plunged down the court-room and into the witness chamber, where the Negroes sat with their wives, Reed's wife with a young baby. The officers of the law accommodatingly indicated the right Negroes, and the mob dragged them out. Hanging was at first proposed, and a man even climbed a telegraph-pole just outside the court-house, but the mob, growing more ferocious as it gathered volume and excitement, yelled its determination: "Burn them! burn them!" They rushed up the road, intending to take the Negroes to the scene of the crime. But it was midday in August, with a broiling hot sun overhead and a dusty road underfoot. A mile from town the mob swerved into a turpentine forest, pausing first to let the Negroes kneel and confess. Calmer spirits again counselled hanging, but some one began to recite in a high-keyed voice the awful details of the crime, dwelling especially on the death of the little girl. It worked the mob into a frenzy of ferocity. "They burned the Hodges and gave them no choice; burn the niggers!" "Please don't burn me," pleaded Cato. And again: "Hang me or shoot me; please don't burn me!" _Burning of the Negroes_