Her father's voice poured out in a golden flood, running the gamut from anger to gentle suasion. It was the voice of the natural orator, which depends very little for its effect upon words. Once, passing a negro church, Joan had heard just such a voice rising and falling within, and though not a word of the sermon reached her, after a few moments she had been almost ready to sway and moan with the congregation as it muttered, "Yas, good Lawd!" "Be mussiful to us po' sinners" "Come, Jesus, come down and take me home!" Some such effect began to be visible on the Major's audience. There were stirrings and murmurings that suggested applause. He rose to them. The eloquence that lies so close under the skin of Southern-born men--certainly of all Southern-born men of Irish stock--came to the surface and flowered. He showed this handful of rough farmers what it should mean to them to be natives of so great and glorious a commonwealth ("'Commonwealth'--what a splendid word, my friends!"); wearing in her bosom all the riches of the earth, nourishing at that bosom a race of supermen ("And superwomen, my friends! superwomen!"); carrying in her womb the greatness of the country's future. "Statesmen we give to the world--law-makers, not lawbreakers! Soldiers we give, not midnight marauders and assassins!" (If he borrowed freely from a certain greater Kentucky orator who speaks only with his pen, the Major was unaware of plagiarism.) "Show me the fools who say Kentuckians are lawless? We make our laws as we need them, gentlemen--and we obey them! Perhaps the greatest of our laws is this: 'Never kick a dog when it is down.'" His voice sank to a warm and personal friendliness. "I ask you, gentlemen--is there any dog more down than the negro? It is not his fault that he is here where he is no longer wanted. It is not his fault that he brought with him when he came the ways and the intelligence of the jungle. It is ours, perhaps, that he has kept them. We shall never tame the negro by proving ourselves savages!--My friends, you and I here in Kentucky pride ourselves on breaking our horses and our dogs by means of kindness. Shall we do less for our unfortunate black brother?" A voice in the crowd remarked, "_You_ can claim kin with him ef you want to, Jedge--_I_ ain't!" A ripple of laughter greeted this sally, and Joan's tension relaxed. She felt intuitively that a crowd which laughs does not kill. While he spoke, her father had more than once caught her eye over the heads of the others, urgently, meaningly. Now he nodded to her. Joan suddenly caught the message he was trying to convey. "He wants us to go to him. Quick, James! Start your engine. Quietly!" In his nervousness, however, the chauffeur started the car with a jerk, and many faces moved in their direction. The Major turned on the full tide of his voice, and rose to his climax.