“You bet I'll hit 'em, brother,” Wiggin panted, as he rolled up his coat-sleeve and pulled down his rumpled cuff. “That's what I'm here for. I'm here, by the holy stars, to show you people a few things which have been overlooked. I intend to go into the history of this case. I want you all to look back a few weeks. A gang of worthless negroes in Darley became so bad and openly defiant in their rowdyism that they were literally running the town. Whenever they would be hauled up before the mayor for disgraceful conduct some old slave-holder, who used to own them or their daddies, would come up and pay their fine and they'd be turned loose again. The black scamps became so spoiled that whenever country people would come in town they would laugh at them, imitate their talk, call them po' white trash, and push them off the sidewalks. Some of you mountain men stood it, God bless your Caucasian bones, just as long as human endurance would let you, and then you formed a secret gang that went into Darley one night and pulled their dives and gave them a lashing on their bare backs that brought about a reform. As every Darley man will tell you, it purified the very air. The negroes were put to work, and they didn't hover like swarms of buzzards round the public square. All of which showed plainly that the cowhide was the only corrective that the niggers knew about or cared a cent for. Trying them in a mayor's court was elevating them to the level of a white man, and they liked it.” “You bet!” cried out Dan Willis, and a laugh went round which spurred Wiggin to further flights of vituperation. “Now to my next step in this history,” he thundered. “In that gang of soundly thrashed scamps there were two who were chums, as I could prove by sworn testimony. Those black fiends refused to submit passively. They skulked around making sullen threats and trying to incite race riot. Failing in this, what did they do? One of them, being hand in glove with Carson Dwight, who says he's going to beat me in this election, applied to him for a job and was sent out to Dwight's farm near to that of Abe Johnson, who is thought--by some--to have been the leader of the thrashing delegation. That nigger, Pete Warren, was promptly joined by his black pal, and Johnson and his wife, one of the best women in this State, were foully murdered in the dead hours of the night as they lay sleeping in their beds. Who did it? _I_ know who did it. _You_ know who did it. Fellow-citizens, those two niggers, with their backs still smarting and their tongues still wagging, were the devils who did the deed.”