Demosthenes!" he says, "you have
lost your pebble in front of all Greece."

Several grinned at Billy Harden as he set down, and three or four
laughed outright. I guess about half of them there knowed him fur a wind
bag, and some wasn't sorry to see him joshed. But I seen what the doctor
was trying to do. He knowed he was in an awful tight place, and he was
feeling that crowd's pulse, so to speak. He had been talking to crowds
fur twenty years, and he knowed the kind of sudden turns they will take,
and how to take advantage of 'em. He was planning and figgering in his
mind all the time jest what side to ketch 'em on, and how to split up
the one, solid crowd-mind into different minds. But the little bit of
a laugh he turned against Billy Harden was only on the surface, like a
straw floating on a whirlpool. These men was here fur business.

Buck Hightower jumps up and says:

"Will, I'm getting tired of this court foolishness. The question is,
Does this man come into this county and do what he has done and get out
again? We know all about him. He sneaked in here and gave out he was
here to turn the niggers white--that he was some kind of a new-fangled
Jesus sent especially to niggers, which is blasphemy in itself--and
he's got 'em stirred up. They're boilin' and festerin' with notions of
equality till we're lucky if we don't have to lynch a dozen of 'em,
like they did in Atlanta last summer, to get 'em back into their places
again. Do we save ourselves more trouble by stringing him up as a
warning to the negroes? Or do we invite trouble by turning him loose?
Which? All it needs is a vote."

And he set down agin. You could see he had made a hit with the boys.
They was a kind of a growl rolled around the room. The feelings in that
place was getting stronger and stronger. I was scared, but trying not to
show it. My fingers kept feeling around in my pocket fur something that
wasn't there. But my brain couldn't remember what my fingers was feeling
fur. Then it come on me sudden it was a buckeye I picked up in the
woods in Indiany one day, and I had lost it. I ain't superstitious about
buckeyes or horse-shoes, but remembering I had lost it somehow made me
feel worse. But Doctor Kirby had a good holt on himself; his face was
a bit redder'n usual, and his eyes was sparkling, and he was both eager
and watchful. When Buck Hightower sets down the chairman clears his
throat like he is going to speak. But--

"Just a moment," says