em, which I s'pose was used ordinary
fur school exhibitions, was being lighted.

We was waltzed up onto the teacher's platform, Doctor Kirby and me, and
set down in chairs there, with two men to each of us, and then a tall,
rawboned feller stalks up to the teacher's desk, and raps on it with the
butt end of a pistol, and says:

"Gentlemen, this meeting will come to order."

Which they was orderly enough before that, but they all took off their
hats when he rapped, like in a court room or a church, and most of 'em
set down.

They set down in the school kids' seats, or on top of the desks, and
their legs stuck out into the aisles, and they looked uncomfortable and
awkward. But they looked earnest and they looked sollum, too, and they
wasn't no joking nor skylarking going on, nor no kind of rowdyness,
neither. These here men wasn't toughs, by any manner of means, but
the most part of 'em respectable farmers. They had a look of meaning
business.

"Gentlemen," says the feller who had rapped, "who will you have for your
chairman?"

"I reckon you'll do, Will," says another feller to the raw-boned man,
which seemed to satisfy him. But he made 'em vote on it before he took
office.

"Now then," says Will, "the accused must have counsel."

"Will," says another feller, very hasty, "what's the use of all this
fuss an' feathers? You know as well as I do there's nothing legal about
this. It's only necessary. For my part--"

"Buck Hightower," says Will, pounding on the desk, "you will please come
to order." Which Buck done it.

"Now," says the chairman, turning toward Doctor Kirby, who had been
setting there looking thoughtful from one man to another, like he was
sizing each one up, "now I must explain to the chief defendant that we
don't intend to lynch him."

He stopped a second on that word LYNCH as if to let it soak in. The
doctor, he bowed toward him very cool and ceremonious, and says, mocking
of him:

"You reassure me, Mister--Mister--What is your name?" He said it in a
way that would of made a saint mad.

"My name ain't any difference," says Will, trying not to show he was
nettled.

"You are quite right," says the doctor, looking Will up and down from
head to foot, very slow and insulting, "it's of no consequence in the
world."

Will, he flushed up, but he makes himself steady and cool, and he goes
on with his little speech: "There is to be no lynching here to-night.
There is to be a trial, and, if necessa