ng but a joke:

"I hope neither of you will take it too much to heart if I'm not
impressed by your sense of justice--or your friend's ability."

"Then," said Will, "I take it that you intend to act as your own
counsel?"

"You may take it," says the doctor, rousing of himself up, "you may take
it--from me--that I refuse to recognize you and your crowd as a court of
any kind; that I know nothing of the silly accusations against me;
that I find no reason at all why I should take the trouble of making a
defence before an armed mob that can only mean one of two things."

"One of two things?" says Will.

"Yes," says the doctor, very quiet, but raising his voice a little and
looking him hard in the eyes. "You and your gang can mean only one of
two things. Either a bad joke, or else--"

And he stopped a second, leaning forward in his chair, with the look of
half raising out of it, so as to bring out the word very decided--

"MURDER!"

The way he done it left that there word hanging in the room, so you
could almost see it and almost feel it there, like it was a thing that
had to be faced and looked at and took into account. They all felt it
that-a-way, too; fur they wasn't a sound fur a minute. Then Will says:

"We don't plan murder, and you'll find this ain't a joke. And since you
refuse to accept counsel--"

Jest then Buck Hightower interrupts him by yelling out, "I make a motion
Billy Harden be prosecuting attorney, then. Let's hurry this thing
along!" And several started to applaud, and call fur Billy Harden to
prosecute. But Will, he pounded down the applause agin, and says:

"I was about to suggest that Mr. Harden might be prevailed upon to
accept that task."

"Yes," says the doctor, very gentle and easy. "Quite so! I fancied
myself that Mr. Harden came along with the idea of making a speech
either for or against." And he grinned at Billy Harden in a way that
seemed to make him wild, though he tried not to show it. Somehow the
doctor seemed to be all keyed up, instead of scared, like a feller
that's had jest enough to drink to give him a fighting edge.

"Mr. Chairman," says Billy Harden, flushing up and stuttering jest a
little, "I b-beg leave to d-d-decline."

"What," says the doctor, sort of playing with Billy with his eyes and
grin, and turning like to let the whole crowd in on the joke, "DECLINE?
The eminent gentleman declines! And he is going to sit down, too, with
all that speech bottled up in him! O