"What'll we do, boys?" cried out the falsetto of the tall young man, whose face was not set strong with a man's beard-roots. "Are we going to let her get away with it like this?" He made some sort of answer for himself, for there came the crash of broken glass as he flung some object across the room. It was enough--it was the cue. "Smash her up, boys!" cried out another voice. "Put her out of business now! She's fooled us for the last time." They did not find Don Lane, not though they searched this house as they had the jail. So now their anger caught them, resentful, unreasoning, unfeeling, brutal anger.... So they wrecked the little house of Aurora Lane. They tore down the pictures from the walls, the curtains from the windows, broke in the windows themselves. They smashed one piece of furniture against another. They even tore up the little white bed--at which for twenty years nightly Aurora Lane had kneeled to pray. Someone caught up one of the pillows, laughing loudly. "Here you are, here's plenty, I reckon! Damn you! You're lucky we don't give you a ride. Tar'n feathers, 'n a ride on a rail--that's the medicine for such as you." The thought of escape, of rescue, of resistance now had passed from the mind of Aurora Lane. Frozen, speechless, motionless, she waited, helpless before this blind fury. They had been after Don, and they had not found him. Where was Don? And what would they now do to her? What was that last coarse, terrible threat that they had meant? She caught her torn frock again to her throat as she saw, not a definite movement toward her, but a cessation of movement, a pause, a silence, which seemed more terrible and more ominous than anything yet in all this hour of torment and terror. What would they do now? They had halted, paused, they stood irresolute, still a pack, a mass, a mob, not yet resolved into units of thinking, reasoning, human beings; when without warning suddenly, there came something to give them cause for thought. There was still a rather dense crowd around the gate, on the walk, where some score or more lingered, who either had not entered the house or who had emerged from it. It was against the edge of this mass that a heavily built man, heavy of face, heavy of hand, cast himself as he now came running up. It was the sheriff, Dan Cowles. He thrust a revolver barrel into the face of the nearest man, caught another by the shoulder. A halt, a pause, whether of irresolution or of doubt, of indecision or of shame, came like a falling and restraining hand upon all this lately demoniacal assemblage. They did not move. It was as though a net had been sprung above them all. "Halt!" called out the voice of the sheriff, high and clear. "What are you doing here?" "It's the sher'f!" croaked one gray beard farther back. "God! what'll he do to us now?"