thers, fathers--even mothers and sisters of the dead were there,
bitter in the thought that their dead had been murdered--white men,
for one old negress.

In their fury they did not think it was the law they themselves were
murdering. The very name of the law was now hateful to them--the law
that had killed their people.

Slowly, surely, but with grim deadliness they laid their plans--this
time to run no risk of failure.

There was a stillness solemn and all-pervading. And from the window
of the jail came again in wailing uncanny notes:--

"I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger,
I can tarry, I can tarry but a night--"

It swept over the mob, frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat,
like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their
dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their
wounded were few--for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them
all--dead--lying out there dead--and they were willing to die
themselves for the blood of the old woman--a negro for whom white men
had been killed.

But their wrath now took another form. It was the wrath of coolness.
They had had enough of the other kind. To rush again on those bales
of cotton doubly protected behind a rock fence, through one small
gate, commanded by the fire of such marksmen as lay there, was not to
be thought of.

They would burn the jail over the heads of its defenders and kill
them as they were uncovered. A hundred men would fire the jail from
the rear, a hundred more with guns would shoot in front.

It was Jud Carpenter who planned it, and soon oil and saturated paper
and torches were prepared.

"We are in for it, Bishop," said Captain Tom, as he saw the
preparation; "this is worse than Franklin, because there we could
protect our rear."

He leaped up on his barricade, tall and splendid, and called to them
quietly and with deadly calm:

"Go to your homes, men--go! But if you will come, know that I fought
for my country's laws from Shiloh to Franklin, and I can die for them
here!"

Then he took from over his heart a small silken flag, spangled with
stars and the blood-splotches of his father who fell in Mexico, and
he shook it out and flung it over his barricade, saying cheerily: "I
am all right for a fight now, Bishop. But oh, for just one of my
guns--just one of my old Parrots that I had last week at Franklin!"

The old man, praying on his knees behind his barricade, said:

"Twelve years ago,