imson glow he measured his
progress.

Inside the building itself another battle against time was being
fought: a battle to hold the attention of a crowd in the background of
whose minds lurked the distrait suspense of waiting for a graver climax
than that of oratorical peroration. About the interior blazed pine
torches and occasional lanterns with tin reflectors. Even this
unaccustomed effort at illumination failed to penetrate the obscurity of
the corners or to carry its ragged brightness aloft into the rafters.
Beyond the sooty formlessness of encroaching shadows one felt rather
than saw the walls, with their rifts through which gusty draught caused
the torches to flare and gutter, sending out the incense of their resin.

Between the Circuit Judge, before whom Asa must face trial and the
County Judge, sat Basil Prince, the principal speaker of the evening,
and his quiet eyes were missing nothing of the mediaevalism of the
picture.

Yet one might have inferred from his tranquillity of expression that he
had never addressed a gathering where the fitful glare of torches had
not shone upon repeating rifles and coon skin caps: where the faces had
not been set and grim as though keyed to an ordeal of fire and lead.

He was noting how every fresh arrival hesitated near the door and
glanced about him. In that brief pause and scrutiny he recognized the
purport of a division, for as each newcomer stepped to the left or the
right of the centre aisle he thereby proclaimed himself a Carr or a
Gregory--taking shrewd thought of clan-mobilization. Then as a low drone
of talk went up from the body of the house and a restless shuffling of
feet, the speaker and his reception committee could not escape the
realization of an ugly tension; of an undertow of anxiety moving deep
beneath the surface affectation of calm. A precarious spirit brooded
there.

The Circuit Judge leaned over toward Prince, whispering nervously
through a smile of courteous commonplace: "Maybe we've made a mistake to
attempt it, General. They seem dangerously restless and tight-strung,
and they've got to be so gripped that they'll forget everything but
your words for a spell!" The speaker, in his abstraction, relapsed
abruptly out of judicial dignity into mountain crudity of speech. "Hit's
ergoin' ter be like holdin' back a flood tide with a splash-dam. Thank
God ef any man kin do thet, I reckon hit's you."

The Louisville lawyer nodded, "I'll try, sir," was hi