“Ugh!” said Mrs. Means.  “You’re a purty court, a’n’t you, Dr. Underwood?”

“Be careful, Mrs. Means, or I shall have to fine you for contempt of court.”

But the people, who were in the cheering humor, cheered Hannah and the justices, and then cheered Ralph again.  Granny Sanders shook hands with him, and allers knowed he’d come out right.  It allers ’peared like as if Dr. Small warn’t jist the sort to tie to, you know.  And old John Pearson went home, after drinking two or three glasses of Welch’s whisky, keeping time to an imaginary triumphal march, and feeling prouder than he had ever felt since he fit the Britishers under Scott at Lundy’s Lane.  He told his wife that the master had jist knocked the hind-sights offen that air young lawyer from Lewisburg.

Walter was held to bail that he might appear as a witness, and Ralph might have sent his aunt a Roland for an Oliver.  But he only sent a note to his uncle, asking him to go Walter’s bail.  If he had been resentful, he could not have wished for a more complete revenge than the day had brought.

CHAPTER XXXII.

AFTER THE BATTLE.

Nothing can be more demoralizing in the long run than lynch law.  And yet lynch law often originates in a burst of generous indignation which is not willing to suffer a bold oppressor to escape by means of corrupt and cowardly courts.  It is oftener born of fear.  Both motives powerfully agitated the people of the region round about Clifty as night drew on after Ralph’s acquittal.  They were justly indignant that Ralph had been made the victim of such a conspiracy, and they were frightened at the unseen danger to the community from such a band as that of Small’s.  It was certain that they did not know the full extent of the danger as yet.  And what Small might do with a jury, or what Pete Jones might do with a sheriff, was a question.  I must not detain the reader to tell how the mob rose.  Nobody knows how such things come about.  Their origin is as inexplicable as that of an earthquake.  But, at any rate, a rope was twice put round Small’s neck during that night, and both times Small was saved only by the nerve and address of Ralph, who had learned how unjust mob law may be.  As for Small, he neither trembled when they were ready to hang him, nor looked relieved when he was saved, nor showed the slightest flush of penitence or gratitude.  He bore himself in a quiet, gentlemanly way throughout, like the admirable villain that he was.

He waived a preliminary examination the next day; his father went his bail, and he forfeited bail and disappeared from the county and from the horizon of my story.  Two reports concerning Small have been in circulation—­one that he was running a faro-bank in San Francisco, the other that he was curing consumption in New York by some quack process.  If this latter were true, it would leave it an open question whether Ralph did well to save him from the gallows.  Pete Jones and Bill, as usually happens to the rougher villains, went to prison, and when their terms had expired moved to Pike County, Missouri.