Something fell upon his head, scraped down over his face. He stifled a scream. He felt the slack noose tighten about his bare throat. “Damn you all to hell,” he raged, sinking his heels in the earth and holding back with all his might. “You beasts! You damned fools! Let go of me! Let me speak! Isn’t there a sensible man among you? Are you all—” He was shoved forward, protesting shrilly, impatiently. They had picked the spot: the place where father and son parted on that distant night. And the tree: the sturdy old oak whose limbs overhung the road. They had picked the limb. There was no delay.... The stout rope was thrown over the limb, the noose was drawn close about his neck by cold, nervous fingers.... A prayer was strangled on his writhing lips. Strong hands hauled at the rope. He swung in the air.... A great white flare of light burst upon the grewsome spectacle—the roar of a charging monster—the din of shrieking klaxons—and then the piercing scream of a woman. The dense mob in the road broke, fighting frantically to get out of the path of Lansing’s car. Some were struck and hurled screaming aside—and on came the car, forging its way slowly but relentlessly through the struggling mass. A man standing up in the tonneau was crying in a stentorian, far-reaching voice: “Fools! Accursed fools! Ye know not what ye do! Stop this hideous outrage! God forgive you if we are too late! God forgive—” Again the woman’s scream. “He is hanging! Hanging! Oh, God!” Up to the swaying, wriggling form shot the car, a force irresistible guided by a man who thought not of the human beings he might crush to death in his desire to reach the one he sought to save. “Let go of that rope!” yelled this man. Behind him came another car. Panic seized the mob. The compact mass broke and scattered. Like sheep, men plunged down the slope—now a frightened, safety-seeking horde of cowards. A writhing, tortured figure lay in the middle of the road, a loose rope swinging free from the limb. The bewildered, startled men who had held it in their hands fell back—uncertain, bewildered. Lansing, unafraid, sprang from the car and rushed to the prostrate form. In a second he was tugging at the noose, cursing frightfully. No one opposed him. The mob seemed suddenly to have become paralyzed, afflicted by the stupor of indecision. Many were already fleeing madly from the scene—down the road, across the slough—yellow-hearted deserters whose only thought was to escape the consequences of recognition. A few score, falling back a little in stubborn disorder, stood glowering and blinking outside the shafts of light. Men with guns and pistols and axes they were, but cowed by the swift realization that they dared not use them. The tall, gaunt figure in the tonneau was praying, his hands uplifted. By his side stood a woman. Now a woman flung herself down beside the man with the rope around his neck, sobbing, moaning, her arms straining to lift his shoulders from the ground.