ing to lynch some one,
or something of that sort?"

"That's about the size of it, colonel," says Will.

"Um!" he says, "What for?"

Then everybody starts to talk all at once, half of them jumping to their
feet, and making a perfect hullabaloo of explanations you couldn't get
no sense out of. In the midst of which the colonel takes a chair and
sets down and crosses one leg over the other, swinging the loose foot
and smiling very patient. Which Will remembers he is chairman of that
meeting and pounds fur order.

"Thank you, Will," says the colonel, like getting order was a personal
favour to him. Then Billy Harden gets the floor, and squares away fur a
longwinded speech telling why. But Buck Hightower jumps up impatient and
says:

"We've been through all that, Billy. That man there has been tried and
found guilty, colonel, and there's only one thing to do--string him up."

"Buck, _I_ wouldn't," says the colonel, very mild.

But that there man Grimes gets up very sober and steady and says:

"Colonel, you don't understand." And he tells him the hull thing as
he believed it to be--why they has voted the doctor must die, the room
warming up agin as he talks, and the colonel listening very interested.
But you could see by the looks of him that colonel wouldn't never be
interested so much in anything but himself, and his own way of doing
things. In a way he was like a feller that enjoys having one part
of himself stand aside and watch the play-actor game another part of
himself is acting out.

"Grimes," he says, when the pock-marked man finishes, "I wouldn't. I
really wouldn't."

"Colonel," says Grimes, showing his knowledge that they are all standing
solid behind him, "WE WILL!"

"Ah," says the colonel, his eyebrows going up, and his face lighting
up like he is really beginning to enjoy himself and is glad he come,
"indeed!"

"Yes," says Grimes, "WE WILL!"

"But not," says the colonel, "before we have talked the thing over a
bit, I hope?"

"There's been too much talk here now," yells Buck Hightower, "talk,
talk, till, by God, I'm sick of it! Where's that ROPE?"

"But, listen to him--listen to the colonel!" some one else sings
out. And then they was another hullabaloo, some yelling "no!" And the
colonel, very patient, rolls himself another smoke and lights it from
the butt of the first one. But finally they quiets down enough so Will
can put it to a vote. Which vote goes fur the colonel to speak.

"Boys,"