It was then that Sturgeon, the wild son, ran up.

“You can’t take that man to jail,” he shouted with an oath, pointing at the farm-hand.

The captain waved his hand.  “And him!”

As two of the Guard approached, Sturgeon started for his gun.  Now, Sturgeon was Gordon’s blood cousin, but Gordon levelled his own pistol.  Sturgeon’s weapon caught in his pocket, and he tried to pull it loose.  The moment he succeeded Gordon stood ready to fire.  Twice the hammer of the sergeant’s pistol went back almost to the turning-point, and then, as he pulled the trigger again, Macfarlan, first lieutenant, who once played lacrosse at Yale, rushed, parting the crowd right and left, and dropped his billy lightly three times—­right, left and right—­on Sturgeon’s head.  The blood spurted, the head fell back between the bully’s shoulders, his grasp on his pistol loosened, and he sank to his knees.  For a moment the crowd was stunned by the lightning quickness of it all.  It was the first blow ever struck in that country with a piece of wood in the name of the law.

“Take ’em on, boys,” called the captain, whose face had paled a little, though he seemed as cool as ever.

And the boys started, dragging the three struggling prisoners, and the crowd, growing angrier and angrier, pressed close behind, a hundred of them, led by the farmer himself, a giant in size, and beside himself with rage and humiliation.  Once he broke through the guard line and was pushed back.  Knives and pistols began to flash now everywhere, and loud threats and curses rose on all sides—­the men should not be taken to jail.  The sergeant, dragging Sturgeon, looked up into the blazing eyes of a girl on the sidewalk, Sturgeon’s sister—­the maid from Lee.  The sergeant groaned.  Logan gave some order just then to the Infant, who ran ahead, and by the time the Guard with the prisoners had backed to a corner there were two lines of Guards drawn across the street.  The first line let the prisoners and their captors through, closed up behind, and backed slowly towards the corner, where it meant to stand.

It was very exciting there.  Winchesters and shotguns protruded from the line threateningly, but the mob came on as though it were going to press through, and determined faces blenched with excitement, but not with fear.  A moment later, the little colonel and the Guards on either side of him were jabbing at men with cocked Winchesters.  At that moment it would have needed but one shot to ring out to have started an awful carnage; but not yet was there a man in the mob—­and that is the trouble with mobs—­who seemed willing to make a sacrifice of himself that the others might gain their end.  For one moment they halted, cursing and waving; their pistols, preparing for a charge; and in that crucial moment the tutor from New England came like a thunderbolt to the rescue.  Shrieks of terror from children, shrieks of outraged modesty from women, rent the air