"Say," said a man who had all the time sat in one of the wagons, holding the horses. "You'd better leave out the stripping, boys!" They began dragging the boys and the old man toward the tar-kettle, and McGill, with his hat drawn down over his eyes, went to the slimy mass and dipped into it a wooden paddle with which they had been stirring it. Taking as much on it as it would carry, he made as if to smear it over the old man's head and beard. I could not stand this--the poor harmless old coot!--and I ran up and struck McGill's arm. "What in hell," he yelled, for some of the tar went on him, "do you mean!" "Don't tar and feather 'em," I begged. "I know these folks. They are a poor wandering family, without money enough to buy land away from any one." "We jist thought we'd kind o' settle down," said Old Man Fewkes whimperingly; "and I've got the money promised me to buy this land. So it's all right and straight!" The silly old leatherhead didn't know he was doing anything against public sentiment; and told the very thing that made a case against him. I have found out since who the man was that promised him the money and was going to take the land; but that was just one circumstance in the land craze, and the man himself was wounded at Fort Donelson, and died in hospital--so I won't tell his name. The point is, that the old man had turned the jury against me just as I had finished my plea. "You have got the money promised you, have you?" repeated McGill. "Grab him, boys!" All this time I was wondering where Rowena could be. I recollected how she had always seemed to be mortified by her slack-twisted family, and I could see her as she meeched off across the prairie back along the Old Ridge Road, as if she belonged to another outfit; and yet, I knew how much of a Fewkes she was, as she joined in the conversation when they planned their great estates in the mythical state of Negosha, or in Texas, or even in California. I grew hot with anger as I began to realize what a humiliation this tarring and feathering would be to her--and I kept wondering, as I have said, where she could be, even as I felt the thrill a man experiences when he sees that he must fight: and just as I felt this thrill, one of our men closed with the old fellow from behind, and wrenching his bird's-claw hands behind his back, thrust the wizened old bearded face forward for its coat of tar.