he begins very quiet, "I wouldn't lynch this man. In the first
place it will look bad in the newspapers, and--"

"The newspapers be d---d!" says some one.

"And in the second place," goes on the colonel, "it would be against the
law, and--"

"The law be d----d!" says Buck Hightower.

"There's a higher law!" says Grimes.

"Against the law," says the colonel, rising up and throwing away his
cigarette, and getting interested.

"I know how you feel about all this negro business. And I feel the same
way. We all know that we must be the negros' masters. Grimes there found
that out when he came South, and the idea pleased him so he hasn't been
able to talk about anything else since. Grimes has turned into what the
Northern newspapers think a typical Southerner is.

"Boys, this thing of lynching gets to be a habit. There's been a negro
lynched to-day. He's the third in this county in five years. They all
needed killing. If the thing stopped there I wouldn't care so much. But
the habit of illegal killing grows when it gets started.

"It's grown on you. You're fixing to lynch your first white man now. If
you do, you'll lynch another easier. You'll lynch one for murder and the
next for stealing hogs and the next because he's unpopular and the next
because he happens to dun you for a debt. And in five years life will
be as cheap in Watson County as it is in a New York slum where they feed
immigrants to the factories. You'll all be toting guns and grudges and
trying to lynch each other.

"The place to stop the thing is where it starts. You can't have it both
ways--you've got to stand pat on the law, or else see the law spit on
right and left, in the end, and NOBODY safe. It's either law or--"

"But," says Grimes, "there's a higher law than that on the statute
books. There's--"

"There's a lot of flub-dub," says the colonel, "about higher laws and
unwritten laws. But we've got high enough law written if we live up to
it. There's--"

"Colonel Tom Buckner," says Buck Hightower, "what kind of law was it
when you shot Ed Howard fifteen years ago? What--"

"You're out of order," says the chairman, "Colonel Buckner has the
floor. And I'll remind you, Buck Hightower, that, on the occasion you
drag in, Colonel Buckner didn't do any talking about higher laws or
unwritten laws. He sent word to the sheriff to come and get him if he
dared."

"Boys," says the colonel, "I'm preaching you higher doctrine than I've
lived by, and I'