by; boys panted it, breathless; women with loosened hair stumbled into
darkling chambers and faltered it out to new-wakened sleepers; pale
girls clutching wraps at their throats whispered it across fences; the
sick, tossing on their hard beds, heard it. The bell clamored it far and
near; it spread over the country-side; it flew over the wires to distant
cities. The White-Caps had got Mr. Harkless!

Lige Willetts had lost track of him out near Briscoes', it was said, and
had come in at midnight seeking him. He had found Parker, the "Herald"
foreman, and Ross Schofield, the typesetter, and Bud Tipworthy, the
devil, at work in the printing-room, but no sign of Harkless, there or
in the cottage. Together these had sought for him and had roused others,
who had inquired at every house where he might have gone for shelter,
and they had heard nothing. They had watched for his coming during the
slackening of the storm and he had not come, and there was nowhere he
could have gone. He was missing; only one thing could have happened.

They had roused up Warren Smith, the prosecutor, the missing editor's
most intimate friend in Carlow, and Homer, the sheriff, and Jared Wiley,
the deputy. William Todd had rung the alarm. The first thing to do was
to find him. After that there would be trouble--if not before. It looked
as if there would be trouble before. The men tramping up to the muddy
Square in their shirt-sleeves were bulgy about the right hips; and when
Homer Tibbs joined Lum Landis at the hotel corner, and Landis saw that
Homer was carrying a shot-gun, Landis went back for his. A hastily sworn
posse galloped out Main Street. Women and children ran into neighbors'
yards and began to cry. Day was coming; and, as the light grew, men
swore and savagely kicked at the palings of fences that they passed.

In the foreglow of dawn they gathered in the Square and listened to
Warren Smith, who made a speech from the court-house fence and warned
them to go slow. They answered him with angry shouts and hootings, but
he made his big voice heard, and bade them do nothing rash; no facts
were known, he said; it was far from certain that harm had been done,
and no one knew that the Six-Cross-Roads people had done it--even if
something had happened to Mr. Harkless. He declared that he spoke in
Harkless's name. Nothing could distress _him_ so much as for them to
defy the law, to take it out of the proper hands. Justice would be done.

"Yes it w