“Why not use real sandpaper?” urged the squire, with innocent mildness.

Jones whirled and drove his delegation ahead of him from the room, both hands upraised, fingers and thumbs snapping loud cracks as if he were urging his horses up Burkett Hill with snapping whip.  The men went tramping down the outside stairs, bellowing the first honest-to-goodness laughter that Egypt had heard for many a day.

Squire Hexter leaped up and grabbed his hat and coat from their hooks.  “Come on, boy!  It looks as if there’s going to be a nominating bee at The Hornet office—­and we mustn’t miss any of the buzzing.”

The two followed close on the heels of the noisy delegation.

Usial Britt opened his door and stood in the frame of light after Jones had halted his clamorous crowd.  The amateur publicist rolled his inky hands in his apron and showed doubt that was growing into alarm.

“Hold your nippety pucket, Usial,” counseled Hexter, calling over the heads of the men.  “The boys had me guessing, too, a few minutes ago.  But this isn’t a lynching bee.”

However, while the crowd laughed and others came hastening to the scene, and while Spokesman Jones was trying to make himself heard above the uproar, an element was added which seemed to discount the Squire’s reassuring words.

Tasper Britt rushed out from Files’s tavern and stood on the porch.  He had one of the papers in his hand.  He ripped the paper to tatters and strewed about him the bits and stamped on the litter.  He shrieked profanity.  Then he leaped off the porch.

In the tavern yard was “Gid-dap” Jones’s stage pung.  Britt yanked the big whip from its socket and bounced across the street, untangling the lash.

“No, you don’t!” bellowed Jones, getting in the way and making grabs at the whip.  “Not with my own private persuader!  Get aholt of him, men!  Down him.  Don’t let him whale the representative we’re going to send from the town of Egypt!”

That declared hint of what was afoot put the last touch on Tasper Britt’s fury.  He fought savagely to force his way through the men.

The voice of Usial checked the melee.  He shouted with a compelling quality in his tone.  As the man on whom they proposed to bestow the town’s highest honor, he had already acquired new authority.  The men loosed Tasper Britt.

“This is between brothers,” said Usial.  He had stepped from his doorway.  He stood alone.  “What outsider dares to interfere?”

Tasper Britt employed his freedom promptly and brutally; he leaped along the avenue the men left for him and began to lash Usial with the whip.  The stolid townsfolk of Egypt stood in their tracks.

“That’s the best way—­let ’em fight it out,” counseled Spokesman Jones.  “Tasp Britt will get his, and it’ll be in the family!”

But Usial merely tossed his big apron over his head and crouched and took the lashing.