The guards struggled with her, and a man stooped over Dylks and voided a mouthful of tobacco juice in his face; another lashed him on the head with a switch of leatherwood: all in a squalid travesty of the supreme tragedy of the race. As if a consciousness of the semblance touched the gospel-read actors in the drama, they shrank in turn from what they had done, and lost themselves in the crowd. The night wore away and when the red sunrise began to pierce the dusk of the Temple, where some had fallen asleep, and others drowsed as they walked to and fro to keep themselves awake, Redfield conferred with his lieutenants. Then they pulled their captive to his feet, not roughly, and moved with him down the aisle and out of the door. They left some of the slumberers still sleeping; of the others not all followed them on their way to Matthew Braile's, up through the woods and past the cornfields and tobacco patches; but with those of the Little Flock who had hung night-long about the Temple, singing and praying to their idol, they arrived, some before and some after the prisoner, at the log cabin of the magistrate. He was sitting after his habit in his splint-bottomed chair tilted against the porch wall, waiting for the breakfast which his wife was getting within. As the crowd straggled up to the porch, he tilted his chair down, and came forward with a frown of puzzle. “What's this?” he demanded; then, catching sight of a woman's eager face among the foremost, his frown relaxed and he said, “Don't all speak at once, Sally.” “'Deed and 'deed, I'm not agoun' to speak at all, Squire Braile; but if you want to know you can see for yourself that they've got the Good Old Man here, and from the tell I've hearn they want you to try him; they've been hittun' him over the face and head all night.” She looked defiantly round on the unbelievers who so far joined in the Squire's grin as to burst into a general laugh, and a cry of “Good for you, Sally. You're about right.” [Illustration: “_Now_ you can see how it feels to have your own husband slap you.”] Braile referred himself to Redfield, who mounted to the porch with the other guards, and the tattered and bedraggled Dylks in their midst. “What are you doing with this man, Jim?” “We've brought him to you to find out, Squire Braile. You know who he is, and all the mischief he's been making in this settlement. We don't need to go into that.” “Wish you'd step in there,” the Squire said, nodding toward the room opposite the kitchen, “and bring me out the Laws of Ohio. You know where it is.” His recognition of Redfield as a law-student pleased the Herd of the Lost, and one of the guards said, “All right, Jim. We'll hold him.” As Redfield disappeared within, the Squire called after him, “Bring out my table, too, will you. We'll have the trial here.” “That's all right as fer as it goes, Squire,” one of the crowd before the cabin called out, “but there ain't room enough for us up there.”