d then they became very
quiet, and only the occasional squealing and stamping of the horses could
be heard. Our preacher spoke first, and then the lawyer from Bloomington,
and then came the great man from Peoria. The people cheered more than ever
when he stood up, and kept hurrahing so long I thought they were not going
to let him speak at all.

At last they quieted down, and the speaker began. His first sentence
contained a reference to Abe Lincoln. The people applauded, and some one
proposed three cheers for "Honest Old Abe." Everybody stood up and
cheered, and I, perched on my father's shoulder, cheered too. And beneath
the legend, "Warranted Fifty Pounds," my heart beat proudly. Silence came
at last--a silence filled only by the neighing and stamping of horses and
the rapping of a woodpecker in a tall tree. Every ear was strained to
catch the orator's first words.

The speaker was just about to begin. He raised one hand, but ere his lips
moved, a hoarse, guttural shout echoed through the woods, "Hurrah'h'h for
Jeff Davis!!!"

"Kill that man!" rang a sharp, clear voice in instant answer.

A rumble like an awful groan came from the vast crowd. My father was
standing on a seat, and I had climbed to his shoulder. The crowd surged
like a monster animal toward a tall man standing alone in a wagon. He
swung a blacksnake whip around him, and the lash fell savagely on two gray
horses. At a lunge, the horses, the wagon and the tall man had cleared the
crowd, knocking down several people in their flight. One man clung to the
tailboard. The whip wound with a hiss and a crack across his face, and he
fell stunned in the roadway.

A clear space of full three hundred feet now separated the man in the
wagon from the great throng, which with ten thousand hands seemed ready to
tear him limb from limb. Revolver shots rang out, women screamed, and
trampled children cried for help. Above it all was the roar of the mob.
The orator, in vain pantomime, implored order.

I saw Little Ramsey drop off the limb of a tree astride of a horse that
was tied beneath, then lean over, and with one stroke of a knife sever the
halter.

At the same time fifty other men seemed to have done the same thing, for
flying horses shot out from different parts of the woods, all on the
instant. The man in the wagon was half a mile away now, still standing
erect. The gray horses were running low, with noses and tails
outstretched.

The spread-out riders cl