University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

The cry rang through the streets of Springdale
just as the sun was setting—so different a setting sun
to the two—that Gordon had murdered his unoffending
and confiding wife.

The crowd forgot their excited talk of politics, and
rushed in wild horror to the jail. The sea of heads
around moved like the waves when the storm strikes
them.

“Lynch him! Lynch him!” was the shout from a
thousand turbulent voices.

The cry for summary justice reached the appalled
prisoner in his cell. Pike, not without calling in assistance,
had succeeded in freeing the throat of the
woman from the twisted bar of the manacles which
bound it closer than a halter: she was stone dead;
for it was more than an hour after Pike locked her in
that fatal apartment ere he returned. A coroner's
inquest had been instantly summoned, and the verdict
was:—Wilful murder against Gordon.

Gordon begged Pike, who stood beside him as the
crowd gathered, swarmed, and shouted without, to let
him see the body of his wife.

“She's not dead!” he exclaimed; “they can't
prove it on me; let me see her.”

“She's as certainly dead as you are certain to be

damned,” said Pike, “or hanged; an' that you'll be
without judge or jury.”

“They dare not; they dare not!” said Gordon,
covering his head in his bed-clothes, to shut from his
senses the loud cry of “Lynch him!” which now, in
accumulated wildness and strengthening purpose, rung
forth on the ear of night, and over the hitherto peaceful
village, from the assembled multitude, who had
gathered in dark masses round the jail.”

“They're breaking in upon us!” exclaimed Pike,
frightened at the thundering at the jail doors which
now took place, and the stern demand to give up the
murderer.

Door after door, with steady determination, was
crushed in by the mob. The sheriff had endeavoured
to curb them; but had been hustled off by them with
threats against his life.

“I couldn't get out,” said Gordon, lifting his head
from the mattrass, “how can they get in?”

“They've got in!” shouted Pike, hastily leaving
the prisoner alone. “I must look after my family—
place or no place.” Gordon quailed beneath the
frowning men, who had climbed up to his prison
window, and were scowling at and cursing him.

He called on Pike not to leave him, but in vain.
The crowd, with lighted candles and torches flashing
to and fro over their heads and against the prison
walls, had entered the passage, where they met Pike,
and demanded him to show them the room of the
murderer.

He pointed it out, and, unable to break through
them, crouched in the recess of one of the cell doors.
They pressed past him with the fierce fury of so
many fiends, and entered the cell of the murderer.
Gordon begged them, for mercy's sake, to spare him.

“You did not spare her!” cried several of them,
seizing him.

“Ha, Hall! I know you!” cried Gordon to the
tavern-keeper, at whose house Ross had arrested
him, and who was trying to win a good name by
Lynching his former comrade; “I know you—you're
a—”

“No murderer!” shouted Hall, leaping upon him.
Gordon struggled with terrific energy; but, manacled
as he was, he was soon overpowered, and dragged
like a beast into the street.

Here Gordon made a stern struggle; and, notwithstanding
his fetters, broke loose from the mob. He
sprang at Hall, and with one blow felled him to the
earth; the iron on his wrist fracturing the skull of
his captor. The crowd stood back, frightened by his
desperation. He here saw Robert Gammon, and
putting his feet together, so as to leap with his prison
incumbrances, he made at the boy, who stood looking
at him in pity—not anger. Bobby stepped aside,
and avoided the blow aimed at him. At this, Gordon
turned on Hall, and again preparing himself for
a leap, he jumped with all his might on his prostrate
form. At this moment a large stone, thrown by one
of the by-standers, felled Gordon to the earth; but
he recovered himself.

The inflictors of summary justice, at this, gathered
close to him; impelled rather by the crowd around
them, than by their own desires, which, however
blood-thirsty, were rendered for the moment, powerless,
by the desperation of their prey. They seemed
like so many hounds, shrinking from the fury of a
stricken tiger. Another missile, hurled at Gordon,
laid him speechless before them. They then seized
him. Some cried out:

“Let's hang him on the hustings!”

“No;” exclaimed one of the candidates, who had
made the last speech there, “that would degrade the
freedom of elections;” and he was about making an

oration over Gordon, like that of Mark Antony over
Cæsar, though, certainly, not with his intentions, when
Gordon raised himself on his hands and knees, and
the speaker retreated in affright.

“Let's burn him!” cried out another, a carpenter;
“let's burn him on the common: there's plenty of
shavings at my shop!”

“Unnecessary cruelty!” shouted a butcher, “knock
him in the head at once, and end the matter.”

“Gentlemen!” protested Squire Norris, who thought
of the fee he should obtain for committing him, rather
than of his offence on the violated majesty of justice,
“let the law take it's course: bring him before me,
and I'll commit him fully—there's no bail in these
cases—and I'll commit him fully for the murder.”

By this time Gordon recovered himself, somewhat,
from the effects of the blow, and flung his hands
wildly around him. Just as he lifted his hands to
wipe away the dust and blood from his face, he was
struck violently with a club. He sprung forward in
the direction of the blow, and uttered so piercing a
cry of mingled despair and rage, that the crowd recoiled
from him for many feet; while their candles
and torches waved rapidly, and many behind were
prostrated by the recoilers. Gordon now stepped
back, unable to keep his feet, from exhaustion, though
still gazing round on the crowd in horror and hate,
with his face bloody, and his hands raised to protect
his head.

“You're doing the very act he has himself committed,”
cried out a humane individual, trying to
press through the crowd, to the protection of the
murderer. He was, however, jerked violently back
by the more sanguinary.

“Don't kill him at once!” exclaimed Thompson,
Pompey's old enemy, who had an amateur's love for
the use of the horse-whip upon human flesh, with an

old stager's practice, as each and all of his slaves,
male and female, could testify by the mean exhibition
of their persons, and who was perhaps desirous of
seeing the different effects of the lash upon a white
and black skin—“Don't kill him at once! strip him
naked, and tie him with his arms round a tree, and
let me operate upon him; I'll whip quickly a full confession
out of him, or he shall leave his hide behind
him and climb the tree.”

“Thompson, you'd better clear out!” exclaimed
Bobby, to him with a kindling eye, stepping up to his
side; “or you may catch what you don't like yourself.”

“Gentlemen—my friends!” shouted Thompson;
“this boy, Bob Gammon, wants to stay the course of
justice—let's give him a taste of the horse-whip—O,
Lord! let me operate—let's take him to my woods—
I'll show you.”

“Do you object?” said a man, taking Bobby by
the collar.

“I do,” said the boy firmly, releasing his gripe.

“Do you hear that!” exclaimed Thompson, exultingly,
“he ought to have it—just say the word.”

“Remember the woods yourself,” said a voice
near to him, while the rest were too intent upon their
purposes to hear or heed the byplay. A friend of
Bobby led him away.

“Hang the murderer upon the sign post,” called
out a friend of Hall's, pointing to that of a tavern
which stood nearby.

“You shan't make a gallows of my sign,” cried
the publican, attempting to resist the determination
of the crowd, who had assisted with a yell.

“Here's a rope!” shouted the friend of Hall, who
had once professed friendship for Gordon, and who
feared it might injure himself if he stood passive in
the matter.

In an instant the rope was fastened round Gordon's
neck. Several ineffectual attempts were made by
many persons to throw it over the sign post. At last
a negro boy of thirteen seized the end of it in his teeth
and clambered up with it. He threw it over: hundreds
below sprang to seize it. In a moment more the
body of the murderer was jerked rapidly up, where
it dangled in the night air not two feet from the likeness
of Washington which formed the sign of the
tavern!!!