第80章

Happy Fear was safe inside, but the jostlers were outside--baffled, ugly, and stirred with the passion that changes a crowd into a mob.

Then some of them caught sight of Joe as he stood alone at the top of the steps, and a great shout of rage and exultation arose.

For a moment or two he did not see his danger.

At the clang of the door, his eyes, caught by the gleam of a wide white hat, had turned toward the street, and he was somewhat fixedly watching Mr.

Ladew extricate Ariel (and her aged and indignant escorts) from an overflow of the crowd in which they had been caught.But a voice warned him:

the wild piping of a newsboy who had climbed into a tree near by.

"JOE LOUDEN!" he screamed."LOOK OUT!"

With a muffled roar the crowd surged back from the jail and turned toward the steps."Tar and feather him!" "Take him over to the river and throw him in!" "Drown him!" "Hang him!"Then a thing happened which was dramatic enough in its inception, but almost ludicrous in its effect.Joe walked quietly down the steps and toward the advancing mob with his head cocked to one side, one eyebrow lifted, and one corner of his mouth drawn down in a faintly distorted smile.

He went straight toward the yelling forerunners, with only a small bundle of papers in his hands, and then--while the non-partisan spectators held their breath, expecting the shock of contact--straight on through them.

A number of the bulge-cheeked formed the scattering van of these forerunners, charging with hoarse and cruel shrieks of triumph.The first, apparently about to tear Joseph Louden to pieces, changed countenance at arm's-length, swerved violently, and with the loud cry, "HEAD HIM OFF!"dashed on up the stone steps.The man next behind him followed his lead, with the same shout, strategy, and haste; then the others of this advance attack, finding themselves confronting the quiet man, who kept his even pace and showed no intention of turning aside for them, turned suddenly aside for HIM, and, taking the cue from the first, pursued their way, bellowing: "HEAD HIM OFF!

HEAD HIM OFF!" until there were a dozen and more rowdyish men and youths upon the steps, their eyes blazing with fury, menacing Louden's back with frightful gestures across the marble balustrade, as they hysterically bleated the chorus, "HEAD HIM OFF!"Whether or not Joe could have walked through the entire mob as he had walked through these is a matter for speculation; it was believed in Canaan that he could.Already a gust of mirth began to sweep over the sterner spirits as they paused to marvel no less at the disconcerting advance of the lawyer than at the spectacle presented by the intrepid dare-devils upon the steps; a kind of lane actually opening before the young man as he walked steadily on.And when Mr.Sheehan, leading half a dozen huge men from the Farbach brewery, unceremoniously shouldered a way through the mob to Joe's side, reaching him where the press was thickest, it is a question if the services of his detachment were needed.

The laughter increased.It became voluminous.

Homeric salvos shook the air.And never one of the fire-eaters upon the steps lived long enough to live down the hateful cry of that day, "HEADHIM OFF!" which was to become a catch-word on the streets, a taunt more stinging than any devised by deliberate invention, an insult bitterer than the ancestral doubt, a fighting-word, and the great historical joke of Canaan, never omitted in after-days when the tale was told how Joe Louden took that short walk across the Court-house yard which made him Mayor of Canaan.