“Well,” she resumed after a pause, “what are you going to do?  You’re not afraid, are you?”

“To tell the truth I am, very much afraid.”

“You and Hildreth and Darrie would best take the three o’clock train back to New York then.”

“I haven’t the least intention of doing that.”

“What are you going to do?”

“—­just let them come.”

“You won’t—­fight?”

“As long as I’m alive.”

“You just said you were afraid.”

“Where a principle is considered, one can be afraid and still stick by one’s guns.”

“You’re a real man, John Gregory, as well as a real poet, and I’m going to help you ... if it was the townspeople alone I would hesitate advising you ... but it’s dirty, hired outsiders who are back of this feeling.  Here!” and she stepped over to the mantel and brought a six-shooter to me and laid it in my hand, “can you shoot?”

“A little, but not very well.”

“It’s loaded already ... here is a pocketful of extra bullets.”

She filled my coat pocket till it sagged heavily.  I slipped the gun in my hip pocket.

“You’re really going to stand them off if they come?”

“As long as no one tries to break into my house I will lie quiet ... the minute someone tries to break in, I’ll shoot, I’ll shoot to kill, and I’ll kill as many as I can before they take me.  I’ll admit I’m frightened, but I have principles of freedom and radical right, and I’ll die for them if necessary.”

Mrs. Rond put her hand on my shoulder like a man.

“You have the makings of a fine fanatic in you ... in the early Christian era you would have been a church martyr.”

* * * * *

I held immediate consultation with Darrie and Hildreth and they were both scared blue ... but they were game, too.

Darrie, however, unfolded a principle of strategy which I put into immediate effect ... she advised me to try a bluff first.

When I walked downtown within the hour, to obtain the New York papers, there was no doubt, by the even more sullen attitude of the inhabitants that I passed on the street, that something serious was a-foot....

I sauntered up to the news stand, took my Times ... hesitated, and then tried the bluff Darrie had suggested: 

“Jim,” I began, to the newsdealer, who had been enough my friend for us to speak to each other by our first names, “Jim, I hear the boys are planning a little party up my way to-night!”

“Not as I’ve heard of, Johnnie,” Jim answered, with sly evasion, and I caught him sending a furtive wink to a man I’d never seen in town before.

“Now, Jim, there’s no use trying to fool me.  I’m on!”

The newspaper stand was, I knew, the centre for the town’s dissemination of gossip.  I knew what I said would sweep everywhere the moment I turned my back.