"Gentlemen," said the sheriff, turning to the crowd, and speaking half-shamedly--"Gentlemen, it's better an' I hopes you all will go home. We don't wanter hurt nobody. I app'ints Major Conway my deputy to take the prisoner to jail. Now the blood be on yo' own heads. I've sed my say." A perfect storm of jeers met this. They surged forward to seize her, while the sheriff half frightened, half undecided, got behind Conway and said:--"It's up to you--I've done all I cu'd." "Go back to your homes, men"--shouted Conway--"I am the sheriff here now, and I swear to you by the living God it means I am a Conway again, and the man who lays a hand on this old woman is as good as dead in his tracks!" For an instant they surged around him cursing and shouting; but he stood up straight and terribly silent; only his keen grey eyes glanced down to the barrel of his pistol and he stood nervously fingering the small blue hammer with his thumb and measuring the distance between himself and the nearest ruffian who stood on the outskirts of the mob shaking a pistol in Conway's face and shouting: "Come on, men, we'll lynch her anyway!" Then Conway acted quickly. He spoke a few words to the old nurse, and as she backed off into the nearby wood, he covered the retreat. To his relief he saw that the sheriff, now thoroughly ashamed, had hold of the prisoner and was helping her along. In the edge of the wood he felt safe--with the trees at his back. And he took courage as he heard the sheriff say: "If you kin hold 'em a little longer I'll soon have my buggy here and we'll beat 'em to the jail." But the mob guessed his plans, and the man who had been most insolent in the front of the mob--a long-haired, narrow-chested mountaineer--rushed up viciously. Conway saw the gleam of his pistol as the man aimed and fired at the prisoner. Instinctively he struck at the weapon and the ball intended for the prisoner crushed spitefully into his left shoulder. He reeled and the grim light of an aroused Conway flashed in his eyes as he recovered himself, for a moment, shocked, blinded. Then he heard some one say, as he felt the blood trickling down his arm and hand: "Marse Ned! Oh, an' for po' ole Zion! Don't risk yo' life--let 'em take me!" Dimly he saw the mob rushing up; vaguely it came to him that it was kill or be killed. Vaguely, too, that it was the law--his law--and every other man's law--against lawlessness. Hazily, that he was the law--its representative, its defender, and then clear as the blue barrel in his hand,--all the dimness and uncertainty gone,--it came to him, that thing that made him say: "I am a Conway again!" Then his pistol leaped from the shadow by his side to the gray light in front, and the man who had fired and was again taking aim at the old woman died in his tracks with his mouth twisted forever into the shape of an unspoken curse.