arrangements in the interest
of order; so Hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed
to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get
hold of him. The reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist
minister was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good
headpiece. Williams was his name--Damon Williams; Damon Williams in
public, Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on
that theme and so frequent.

The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who
had ever been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most
imposing in the town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden
importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around.
And so was the name of Robert Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the
despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in the
region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, they
found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or
unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been
their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who had
really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves
objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their
shopmates.

The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man
was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He
issued an extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole
paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full
and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait
of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on
the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. It made a
great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever
contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of the paper
was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was
sold.

When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from
Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could
hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial
was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying
pictures of the accused.

Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. People came from miles
around to see the hanging; they brought c