this
posse."

"They will be!" shouted a farmer. "Don't you worry about that."

"We want to get into some sort of shape," cried Eph.

"Shape, hell!" said Hartley Bowlder.

There was a hiss and clang and rattle behind him, and a steam whistle
shrieked. The crowd divided, and Hartley's sorrel jumped just in time as
the westbound accommodation rushed through on its way to Rouen. From the
rear platform leaned the sheriff, Horner, waving his hands frantically
as he flew by, but no one understood--or cared--what he said, or, in the
general excitement, even wondered why he was leaving the scene of
his duty at such a time. When the train had dwindled to a dot and
disappeared, and the noise of its rush grew faint, the court-house bell
was heard ringing, and the mob was piling pell-mell into the village to
form on the Square. The judge stood alone on the embankment.

"That settles it," he said aloud, gloomily, watching the last figures.
He took off his hat and pushed back the thick, white hair from his
forehead. "Nothing to do but wait. Might as well go home for that. Blast
it!" he exclaimed, impatiently. "I don't want to go there. It's too hard
on the little girl. If she hadn't come till next week she'd never have
known John Harkless."

CHAPTER XI. JOHN BROWN'S BODY

All morning horsemen had been galloping through Six-Cross-Roads,
sometimes singly, oftener in company. At one-o'clock the last posse
passed through on its return to the county-seat, and after that there
was a long, complete silence, while the miry corners were undisturbed by
a single hoof-beat. No unkempt colt nickered from his musty stall; the
sparse young corn that was used to rasp and chuckle greenly stood rigid
in the fields. Up the Plattville pike despairingly cackled one old
hen, with her wabbling sailor run, smit with a superstitious horror of
nothing, in the stillness; she hid herself in the shadow underneath a
rickety barn, and her shrieking ceased.

Only on the Wimby farm were there signs of life. The old lady who had
sent Harkless roses sat by the window all morning and wiped her eyes,
watching the horsemen ride by; sometimes they would hail her and tell
her there was nothing yet. About two-o'clock, her husband rattled up
in a buckboard, and got out the late, and more authentic, Mr. Wimby's
shot-gun, which he carefully cleaned and oiled, in spite of its
hammerless and quite useless condition, sitting, meanwhile, by the
window opposite his w