innocent men lied about and charged with
disgraceful crimes?"

"I admire that fellow's cheek," said Bradley in an undertone to Richard
Dewey, but he soon found that the consequences were likely to be
disastrous to him and his party. The crowd were getting impatient, and
readily seconded the words of Jim Brown when he followed up Bill
Mosely's speech by a suggestion that they proceed at once to vindicate
justice by a summary execution.

They rushed forward and seized upon our four friends, Ki Sing included,
and hurried them off to a cluster of tall trees some twenty rods away.

CHAPTER XVII.

LYNCH LAW.

Nothing is so unreasoning as a crowd under excitement. The miners were
inflamed with fierce anger against men of whom they knew nothing, except
that they were accused of theft by two other men, of whom also they knew
nothing. Whether the charge was true or false they did not stop to
inquire. Apparently, they did not care. They only wanted revenge, and
that stern and immediate.

The moderate speaker, already referred to, tried to turn the tide by an
appeal for delay. "Wait till morning," he said. "This charge may not be
true. Let us not commit an injustice."

But his appeal was drowned in the cries of the excited crowd, "Hang the
horse-thieves! string 'em up."

Each of the four victims was dragged by a force which he couldn't
resist to the place of execution.

Richard Dewey was pale, but his expression was stern and contemptuous,
as if he regarded the party of miners as fools or lunatics.

"Was this to be the end?" he asked himself. "Just as the prospect of
happiness was opening before him, just as he was to be reunited to the
object of his affection, was he to fall a victim to the fury of a mob?"

Jake Bradley perhaps took the matter more philosophically than either of
the other three. He had less to live for, and his attachment to life was
not therefore so strong. Still, to be hanged as a thief was not a
pleasant way to leave life, and that was what he thought of most. Again,
his sympathy was excited in behalf of the boy Ben, whom he had come to
love as if he were his own son. He could not bear to think of the boy's
young life being extinguished in so shocking a manner.

"This is rough, Ben," he managed to say as the two, side by side, were
hurried along by the vindictive crowd.

Ben's face was pale and his heart was full of sorrow and awe with the
prospect of a shameful death rising before him.