he had not the slightest
intention of giving.

"Why--"

"_Coward!_"

The carrying power of Phil's voice had been deplored from her earliest
youth by her aunts. Her single word, flung across the heads of the
auditors, splashed upon the tense silence like a stone dropped suddenly
into a quiet pond.

"Put him out!" yelled some one who attributed this impiety to the usual
obstreperous boy. A number of young fellows in Phil's neighborhood, who
knew the source of the ejaculation, broke into laughter and jeers.
Alexander Waterman knew that voice; he had seen Phil across the room,
but had assumed that her presence was due to her vulgar curiosity, on
which his wife had waxed wroth these many years. In his cogitations Phil
was always an unaccountable and irresponsible being: it had not occurred
to him that she might resent his veiled charges against her father and
Amzi. Waterman, by reason of his long experience as a stump speaker,
knew how to deal with interruptions. He caught up instantly the
challenge Phil had flung at him.

"Coward?" he repeated. "I should like to ask you, my fellow-citizens,
who is the coward in this crisis? Is it I, who face you to-day clothed
in my constitutional guaranty of free and untrammeled speech, to speak
upon the issues of this grave crisis; or is it the conspirators who meet
in dark rooms to plot and plunder?"

Applause and cheers greeted this reply. Men looked at each other and
grinned, as much as to say, "Alec knows his business." In Phil's
immediate vicinity a number of young men, lost in admiration of her
temerity, and not without chivalrous instincts, jeered the orator's
reply. In the middle of the room Fred Holton, who had gone to the
meeting with some of his farmer neighbors that he met in Main Street,
turned at the sound of Phil's voice. Before Waterman, luxuriating in his
applause, could resume, Fred was on his feet.

"As this was called as a meeting of citizens, I have a right to be here.
We have listened for nearly an hour to a speech that has made nothing
any clearer--that has, in fact, gone all round the pump without finding
the handle. It's time we knew what it is the speaker wants done; it's
time he came to the point and named these men who have robbed their
friends and neighbors. Let's have the names right now before we go any
further."

"Who's that talking? Put him out!"

The meeting was in disorder, and a dozen men were trying to talk.
Waterman, smiling patiently, ra