“Gentlemen, to some extent they was like you. They wasn't--I'm told--much interested in the fate of that nigger, one way or another, and so they sat thar in judgment over Carson Dwight, and tried to argue 'im down. I'm told by a respectable man who was thar” (and here Pole Baker lowered his head till his eyes were out of sight and continued to whittle his stick) “that nothin' feazed 'im. Pity was in his big, boyish heart, and it looked out of his eyes and clogged up his voice. They told him it meant ruination to all his political hopes, and that it would turn his daddy against him for good and all. But he said he didn't care. They held out agin him a long time, and then one thing he said won 'em over--one thing. Kin you imagine what that was, friends and neighbors? It was this: Carson Dwight said he loved you mountain men with all his heart; he said no better or braver blood ever flowed in human veins than yours; he said he knew you _thought_ you was right, but that you hadn't had the chance to discover what he had found out, and that was that Pete Warren was innocent and as harmless as a baby, and that--now, listen!--that he knew the time would come when you'd be convinced of the truth and carry regret for your haste to your graves. 'It is because,' he told them, 'I want to save men that I love from remorse and sorrow that I am in for this thing!' Fellow-citizens, that shot went home. Those worthless 'town dudes,' as they was called just now, saved you from committing a crime against yourselves an' God on high. Did any human bein' ever see a better illustration than that of the duty of enlightened folks to-day--the duty of them who, with divine sight, see great truths--to lead others in the right direction? As God Almighty smiles over you to-day in this broad sunlight, that gang in that store, headed by a new Joseph, was an' are the truest and best friends you ever had.”