And the mob did not attack, although they cursed and bluffed, because each one of them knew it meant death--death to some one of them, and that one might be--I! Between life and death "I" is a bridge that means it all. A stone wall ran around the front of the jail. A small gate opened into the jail-yard. At the jail door, covering that opening, stood Edward Conway. They tried parleying with him, but he would have none of it. "Go back--" he said, "I am the sheriff here--I am the law. The man who comes first into that gate will be the first to die." In ten minutes they made their attack despite the commands of their leader, who still sat his horse on the public square, pale and with a bitter conflict raging in his breast. With shouts and curses and a headlong rush they went. Pistol bullets flew around Conway's head and scattered brick dust and mortar over him. Torches gleamed through the dark crowd as stars amid fast flying clouds in a March night. But through it all every man of them heard the ringing warning words: "Stop at the gateway--stop at the dead line!" Right at it they rushed and crowded into it like cattle--shooting, cursing, throwing stones. Then two fell dead, blocking the gateway. Two more, wounded, with screams of pain which threw the others into that indescribable panic which comes to all mobs in the death-pinch, staggered back carrying the mob with them. Safe from the bullets, they became frenzied. The town trembled with their fury. All order was at an end. And Edward Conway stood, behind a row of cotton bales, in the jail-yard, covering still the little gateway, and the biting pain in his shoulder had a companion pain in his side, where a pistol ball had ploughed through, but he forgot it as he slipped fresh cartridges into the chambers of his pistol and heard again the chant which came from out the jail window, like a ghost-voice from the clouds: "Of that City, to which I journey, My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light. There is no sorrow, nor any sighing, Nor any tears there, nor any dying..., I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry--I can tarry but a night." At a long distance they shot at Conway,--they hooted, jeered, cursed him, but dared not come closer, for he had breast-worked himself behind some cotton-bales in the yard, and they knew he could still shoot. Then they decided to batter down the stone wall first--to make an opening they could rush through, and not be blocked in the deadly gateway. An hour passed, and torches gleamed everywhere. Attacking the wall farther down, they soon had it torn away. They could now get to him. It was a perilous position, and Conway knew it. Help--he must have it--help to protect his flank while he shot in front. If not, he would die soon, and the law with him.