"I'll see 'bout dis yer, I will!" cried the sheriff, as at last he got clear and took refuge in the boat which lay waiting at the edge of the lawn. "I'll have you-all up for 'sistin' a officah, dat's whut I will." "'Sistin' a officah! Who! _You?"_ said Bill. The scorn in his voice was infinite. "Say, you low-down scoun'rel, you say very much mo' an' I'll blow yoh head off. You're on our _lan'_, does you know dat? Now you git _off_, right soon." The officer of the law retreated as far as he could into the boat. "You thought Cunnel Blount was all 'lone in bed, too weak to move, didn't you?" resumed Bill. "Why, blame you, you couldn't 'rest Colonel Calvin Blount, not if he was _daid!_ Go 'long dah, now!" Mose Taylor, the grim jest, the sardonic answer of the whites of Tullahoma County to those who deal fluently with questions of which they know but little, was fain to take Bill's sincere advice. Behind the shelter of the first clump of trees, he folded his arms into a posture as near resembling that of Napoleon as he could assume. He frowned heavily. "Huh!" said he savagely, looking from one to another of the crew who made his "posse." "Huh!" he said again, and yet again, "Huh!" A cloud sat on his soul. It seemed to him that persons like himself, earnestly engaged in settling the race problem, ought not to have such difficulties cast in their way. Meantime, in the house, Eddring still confronted the rage of Colonel Blount. "You," panted Blount. "You! I thought you were one of us." "I am, I am!" cried Eddring. "I was with you in what you did. I tried to get to you. It had to be done. But somewhere, Cal, we must stop. We've got to pull up. We can't fight lawlessness with worse lawlessness. We must begin with the law." A bitter smile was his answer. "Is that sort of sheriff the foundation that you lay?" said Calvin Blount, panting, as at length he threw his six-shooter upon the bed. "Let me tell you, then, the law is never going to stand. That's no law for the Delta." Eddring sunk his face between his hands. "Cal," he said, "we've got to begin. This country is being ruined, and perhaps it is partly our own fault. Now, I am guilty as you. are; but I say, we have got to give ourselves up to the law." "Give myself up? Why, of _course_ I will. I was going up directly, soon as I got well, to talk it over with the judge, and arrange for a trial. All this has got to be squared up legally, of course. But that's a heap different from sending a nigger sheriff down here to arrest Cal Blount in his own house. Why, I'm one of the oldest citizens in these here bottoms. I've carried my end of the log for fifty years, with black and white. Why, if I should go in with that fellow, where'd be my reputation? I'd have a heap of show of living down here after that, wouldn't I? Why, my neighbors'd kill me, and do me a kindness at that."