And so, at sight of Hurdenburg, the infamous minion of the wicked St. Friend, Hurdenburg drunk on political and ecclesiastical power, they make a rush for him, and, led by crawling Jim, this crew, in the masks of the Mythical Velaska, tie Surto Hurdenburg to a pillar. They drink more buried treasure, as they decide what to do with him. They formally and solemnly conclude that they will be merciful and not follow the well established American lynching custom of burning alive, though Hurdenburg, in this case, deserves such treatment. They untie him from the pillar, and carry him to the foot of a Golden Rain Tree of Democracy. Crawling Jim puts the noose in place. Then Hurdenburg is hanged by the neck till he is dead. And the merrymakers go back to the hall undisturbed and dance till five minutes before twelve and then the city police close the hall, according to expectations. The followers of the masked Velaska go home, apparently satisfied with one night’s work, most of them in the arms of one another and quite drunk with wine. It is toward morning a policeman finds Hurdenburg, cut down by an unknown hand, lying in the grass. June 24:—All local papers, including _The Boone Ax_, roar about the lynching for one day, then proceed to minimize it as much as possible. So I will do the same in this chronicle, being loyal to my city. A Chicago paper of infamous repute is glad to “have something on” Springfield and sends down gloating reporters, who make the very worst of it, rehash Springfield’s political history for the last month, putting the ugliest face on everything, tracing through the city their own kind of history. June 25:—Rumors of the threatened lynching of all the accepted leaders of the town are circulating from the City Hall, though the City Hall people are with the greatest impartiality included in the rumors. The Board of Education is not frightened. The city today proceeds to give Hurdenburg a wonderful funeral. This funeral seems to ring the doom of infamous Yellow Halls for all time. Saint Friend preaches a funeral sermon with tremendous fire. June 26:—It appears that the bad bloods of the town are frantically devouring their own souls, or leaving. The city has been losing, since the election and the lynching, as much genius as it does deviltry. Sparrow Short who has been obliged to take down his pictures and hang them defiantly in his own studio, has turned into a profane old varlet, amazing to hear, and is inciting as many pupils of ours as possible to leave Springfield. He is himself threatening to leave. But he does not leave. “Certainly it is no hardship,” as the Sentimental Romanoff says, in _The Boone Ax_, “to see departing the most of those with a special talent for raising Cain.” And he remarks on what an awful row they would have made, had they been sent out of town. The coffee houses still exist. There is no denying that they are getting pretty lively, considering that nothing but coffee is dispensed.