“Hang the damn nigger!” screamed Mosely, and the crowd surged forward ominously.  You could see, by the shaking torch-light, faces in which the eyes glared wolf-like, brandished fists, glints of guns.  Neptune, without a flicker of fear, regarded them with his sorrowful gaze.  But Peter Champneys stepped in front of him, and thrust the cold muzzle of the shot-gun against Mosely’s face.  The man, a coward at heart, leaped back, trampling upon the toes of those behind him, who cursed him shrilly and vindictively.

Then spoke up small Peter Champneys, standing barefooted and bareheaded, clothed in a coarse blue blouse and a pair of patched and faded denim trousers, but for all that heir to a long line of dead-and-gone Champneyses who had been, whatever their faults, fearless and gallant gentlemen.

“Get back there, you, Mosely!” Peter Champneys spoke in the voice his grandfather had on a time used to a recalcitrant field-hand.

“Chuck that little nigger-lover in the swamp!”

“Knock him down an’ git the nigger, Mosely!”

“Burn down the house!”

But the shot-gun in that steady young hand held them in check for a breathing-space.  They knew Peter Champneys.

“Mosely!” snapped Peter.  “You, too, Nicolson!  Stand back, you white-livered hounds!  First one of you lays a hand on me or Daddy Nep gets his head blown off!  Damn you, Mosely! don’t make me tell you again to get back!”

And Mosely saw that in the boy’s eyes that drove him back, swearing.

The huge farm-hand, who had shifted and squirmed his way to the back of the crowd, now lifted his arm.  A rope with a noose at the end snaked over the tossing heads, and all but settled over black Neptune’s.  It slipped, writhing from the old man’s shoulder and down his shirt.  The mob set up a disappointed and yet hopeful howl.

“Try it again!  Try it again!” they shrieked.  Then a sort of waiting hush fell upon them.  The farm-hand, to whom the rope had been tossed, was again making ready for a throw, measuring the distance with his eyes.  Peter, his lips tightening, waited too.  The farm-hand was a tall man, and the posse had shifted to allow him space.  His arm shot up, the noosed rope whizzed forward.  But even as it did so Peter Champneys’s trigger-finger moved.  The report sounded like a clap of thunder, and was followed by a roar of rage and pain.  The rope-thrower, with the rope tripping his feet and impeding his movements, danced about wildly, shaking the hand from which three fingers had been cleanly clipped.  At that instant another posse rode up, with a baying of hounds to herald it.  One saw the sheriff on a large bay horse, a Winchester in the crook of his arm.  With a merest glance at what had been Jake, he pushed his way through the throng, and was confronted by Peter Champneys standing in front of old Neptune Fennick, with a smoking shot-gun in his hands.

“You better do something, quick!  If you let anything happen to Daddy Nep, you’ve got to kill me first,” panted Peter.