up in. And I guess when they
looked at him standing there, so fine and straight and splendid, it jest
seemed plumb unpossible to make a move. There was a spirit in him that
couldn't be killed. Doctor Kirby said afterward that was what come of
being real "quality," which was what Colonel Tom was--it was that in him
that licked 'em. It was the best part of their own selves, and the best
part of their own country, speaking out of him to them, that done it.
Mebby so. Anyhow, after a minute more of that strain, a feller by the
door picks up his gun out of the corner with a scrape, and hists it to
his shoulder and walks out. And then Colonel Tom says to Will, with his
eyebrow going up, and that one-sided grin coming onto his face agin:

"Will, perhaps a motion to adjourn would be in order?"

CHAPTER XXII

So many different kinds of feeling had been chasing around inside of me
that I had numb spots in my emotional ornaments and intellectual organs.
The room cleared out of everybody but Doctor Kirby and Colonel Tom and
me. But the sound of the crowd going into the road, and their footsteps
dying away, and then after that their voices quitting, all made but very
little sense to me. I could scarcely realize that the danger was over.

I hadn't been paying much attention to Doctor Kirby while the colonel
was making that grandstand play of his'n, and getting away with it.
Doctor Kirby was setting in his chair with his head sort of sunk on his
chest. I guess he was having a hard time himself to realize that all
the danger was past. But mebby it wasn't that--he looked like he might
really of forgot where he was fur a minute, and might be thinking of
something that had happened a long time ago.

The colonel was leaning up agin the teacher's desk, smoking and looking
at Doctor Kirby. Doctor Kirby turns around toward the colonel.

"You have saved my life," he says, getting up out of his chair, like
he had a notion to step over and thank him fur it, but was somehow not
quite sure how that would be took.

The colonel looks at him silent fur a second, and then he says, without
smiling:

"Do you flatter yourself it was because I think it worth anything?"

The doctor don't answer, and then the colonel says:

"Has it occurred to you that I may have saved it because I want it?"

"WANT it?"

"Do you know of any one who has a better right to TAKE it than I have?
Perhaps I saved it because it BELONGS to me--do you suppose I