an more than
the hide of a broncho?

But from an honest, well intentioned frenzy of justice outraged to
any pretext is an easy step. From the quick lynching of the rapist
and murderer--to be sure that the lawyers and courts did not acquit
them--was one step. To hang a half crazy old woman for burning a mill
was another, and the natural consequence of the first.

And so these people flocked to the burning--they who had helped lynch
before--the negro-haters, who had never owned a negro and had no
sympathy--no sentiment for them. It is they who lynch in the South,
who lynch and defy the law.

The great mill was in ruins--its tall black smokestacks alone stood
amid its smoking, twisted mass of steel and ashes--a rough,
blackened, but fitting monument of its own infamy.

They gathered around it--the disorderly, the vicious, the lynchers of
the Tennessee Valley.

Fitful flashes of flame now and then burst out amid the ruins,
silhouetting the shadows of the lynchers into fierce giant forms with
frenzied faces from which came first murmurs and finally shouts of:

"_Lynch her! Lynch her!_"

Above, in the still air of the night, yet hung the pall of the black
smoke-cloud, from whose heart had come the torch which had cost capital
its money, and the mill people their living.

They were not long acting. Mammy Maria had flown to the little
cottage--a crazy, hysterical creature--a wreck of herself--over-worked
in body and mind, and frenzied between the deed and the promptings of a
blind superstitious religion.

Lily hung to her neck sobbing, and the old woman in her pitiful fright
was brought back partly to reason in the great love of her life for the
little child. Even in her feebleness she was soothing her pet.

There were oaths, curses and trampling of many feet as they rushed in
and seized her. Lily, screaming, was held by rough arms while they
dragged the old nurse away.

Into a wood nearby they took her, the rope was thrown over a limb, the
noose placed around her neck.

"Pray, you old witch--we will give you five minutes to pray."

The old woman fell on her knees, but instead of praying for herself,
she prayed for her executioners.

They jeered--they laughed. One struck her with a stick, but she only
prayed for them the more.

"String her up," they shouted--"her time's up!"

"Stand back there!"

The words rang out even above the noise of the crowd. Then a man,
with the long blue deadly barrel of the Colt