ares or things
like that. But ever since that night in that schoolhouse, if I do have a
nightmare, it takes the shape of that roll being called. Every word was
like a spade grating and gritting in damp gravel when a grave is dug. It
sounded so to me.

"Samuel Palmour, how do you vote?" that chairman would say.

Samuel Palmour, or whoever it was, would hist himself to his feet, and
he would say something like this:

"Death."

He wouldn't say it joyous. He wouldn't say it mad. He would be pale when
he said it, mebby--and mebby trembling. But he would say it like it was
a duty he had to do, that couldn't be got out of. That there trial had
lasted so long they wasn't hot blood left in nobody jest then--only cold
blood, and determination and duty and principle.

"Buck Hightower," says the chairman, "how do you vote?"

"Death," says Buck; "death for the man. But say, can't we jest LICK the
kid and turn him loose?"

And so it went, up one side the room and down the other. Grimes had
showed 'em all their duty. Not but what they had intended to do it
before Grimes spoke. But he had put it in such a way they seen it was
something with even MORE principle to it than they had thought it was
before.

"Billy Harden," says the chairman, "how do you vote?" Billy was the last
of the bunch. And most had voted fur death. Billy, he opened his mouth
and he squared himself away to orate some. But jest as he done so, the
door opened and Old Daddy Withers stepped in. He had been gone so long
I had plumb forgot him. Right behind him was a tall, spare feller, with
black eyes and straight iron-gray hair.

"I vote," says Billy Harden, beginning of his speech, "I vote for death.
The reason upon which I base--"

But Doctor Kirby riz up and interrupted him.

"You are going to kill me," he said. He was pale but he was quiet, and
he spoke as calm and steady as he ever done in his life. "You are going
to kill me like the crowd of sneaking cowards that you are. And you ARE
such cowards that you've talked two hours about it, instead of doing it.
And I'll tell you why you've talked so much: because no ONE of you alone
would dare to do it, and every man of you in the end wants to go away
thinking that the other fellow had the biggest share in it. And no ONE
of you will fire the gun or pull the rope--you'll do it ALL TOGETHER, in
a crowd, because each one will want to tell himself he only touched the
rope, or that HIS GUN missed.

"I know you