The court-room in the square brick court house was packed with masses of silent men. The halls were crowded. The yard of the court house was full, and the streets were alive with grim-faced men. The hitching racks were lined with saddle horses, and other horses and countless mules were hitched to fences and trees even beyond the outskirts of the town. The hotels had long since abandoned system, and every dwelling house was open and full to overflowing. Outside of the town, or mingling in the fringes of the crowd at its edges, there huddled even greater numbers of those of the colored race. Some of these were armed. The white men in the streets were armed. None showed hurry or agitation; none shouted or gesticulated; yet the clerk of the court had a pistol in his pocket; each juryman was likewise equipped; the judge on the bench knew there was a pistol in the drawer of the desk before him. This gathering of the people was thoughtfully prepared. It was a crisis, and was so recognized. The silent audience was packed close up to the rail back of which was stationed the judge's stand and jury-box. Within the railing there was scanty room; every member of the local bar was there, and many lawyers from counties round about. Erect in the grave-faced assemblage, there stood one man, pale of face but with burning eyes. It was John Eddring, attorney for the defense in the case of the state against Calvin Blount, charged with murder. His voice, clean-cut, eager, incisive, reached every corner of the room. His gestures were few and downright. He was swept forward by his own convictions of the truth. Eddring was approaching the conclusion of the argument which he had begun the previous day. The testimony in these cases, known generally as the "lynching cases," had long been in and had passed through examination, cross-examination, rebuttal and surrebuttal. Eddring knew that he would be followed by an able man, a district attorney conscientious in the discharge of his duty, however unpleasant it might be. He had therefore with the greatest care analyzed the evidence of the state as offered, and had demonstrated the technical impossibility of a conviction. Yet this, he knew, would not upon this occasion suffice. He went on toward the heart of the real case which he felt was then on trial before this jury of the people. "Your Honor and gentlemen of the jury," he continued, "we all know that we are, in effect, trying today not one man, not one district, not one state, but an entire system. We are trying the South. The life and the liberty of the South are at stake. To prove this, these men have come in and given themselves up as an atonement, as a blood offering like to that of old; seeking to prove that what they continually have coveted is not lawlessness, but the law.