His shoulders and wrists ripped at their bonds, and the men busied about them were hurled away as with a powder blast. The arms came free and the hands seized up a chair. A human tornado was at work in a space too crowded for the use of firearms; and when the insufficient weapon had been shattered into splinters and fallen in worthless bits there were broken crowns and prostrate figures in that room. Faces were marked with bruise and blood and laceration--but the odds were too overwhelmingly uneven, and at last they bore him down, pounded and kicked, to the puncheon floor, and when they lifted him to his feet again the ropes that fastened him were firm enough to hold. Then Parish Thornton spoke again: spoke with a passion that seemed almost as destructive as the short-lived chair he had been swinging flail-like, though the panting exertion made his voice come in disjointed and sob-like gasps. "Ye hain't done yit," he shouted into their maddened faces as they crowded and yapped about him. "By dint of numbers ye've done tuck me alive, but thar's still a reckonin' ahead!" Above the answering chorus of jeers rang his berserk fury of defiance. "Ye kin go ahead an' hang me now--an' be damned ter ye! Ye kin even murder a woman ef ye've got a mind ter--but thar's a baby in this house thet's comin' ter manhood some day." "Ye won't be hyar ter train him up fer vengeance," came the sneering voice of Bas Rowlett who had stood clear of that conflict; and glaring at him Thornton managed a bitter laugh. "He won't need no trainin' up," he retorted. "Hit's bred in his blood an' his bone ter hate snakes an' kill 'em. He's drunk hit in at his mother's breast an' breathed hit in ther air.... He'll settle our scores some day!" CHAPTER XXXV Sim Squires knew that when the brief farce of the trial took place he would be called forward to testify with a few prearranged lies. In his mouth was a pebble, put there to change his voice--but in his mutinous heart was an obsession of craving to see Bas Rowlett in such a debased position as that which Parish Thornton occupied--for, of all men, he feared and hated Bas most. This unrelished participation in the mob spirit was more abhorrent than it had been before. The scorn of Dorothy's eyes had a scorpion sting that he could not escape--and this woman had given his life an atmosphere of friendliness and kindliness which it had not known before. "Now," announced the masked spokesman, "we're well-nigh ready, an' thar hain't no virtue in bein' dilitary--albeit we don't aim ter hang him untried. Witness Number One, come forward." Witness Number One was Sim Squires, and as though his tongue had been stricken with sudden dumbness and his limbs with paralysis, he hung back when he had been called. Slowly he looked at Parish Thornton, whose face was pale, but set once more to the calm of resoluteness--and at the ghost-terror and the lingering contempt in the deep and suffering eyes of the wife.