“Gentlemen,” said Carteret, entering with Mr. Delamere the room where the men were gathered, and raising his hand for silence, “the people of Wellington were on the point of wreaking vengeance upon a negro who was supposed to have been guilty of a terrible crime. The white men of this city, impelled by the highest and holiest sentiments, were about to take steps to defend their hearthstones and maintain the purity and ascendency of their race. Your purpose sprung from hearts wounded in their tenderest susceptibilities.”
“ ’Rah, ’rah!” shouted a tipsy sailor, who had edged in with the crowd.
“But this same sense of justice,” continued Carteret oratorically, “which would lead you to visit swift and terrible punishment upon the guilty, would not permit you to slay an innocent man. Even a negro, as long as he behaves himself and keeps in his place, is entitled to the protection of the law. We may be stern and unbending in the punishment of crime, as befits our masterful race, but we hold the scales of justice with even and impartial hand.”
“ ’Rah f’ ’mpa’tial ban’!” cried the tipsy sailor, who was immediately ejected with slight ceremony.
“We have discovered, beyond a doubt, that the negro Sandy Campbell, now in custody, did not commit this robbery and murder, but that it was perpetrated by some unknown man, who has fled from the city. Our venerable and distinguished fellow townsman, Mr. Delamere, in whose employment this Campbell has been for many years, will vouch for his character, and states, furthermore, that Campbell was with him all last night, covering any hour at which this crime could have been committed.”
“If Mr. Delamere will swear to that,” said someone in the crowd, “the negro should not be lynched.”
There were murmurs of dissent. The preparations had all been made. There would be great disappointment if the lynching did not occur.
“Let Mr. Delamere swear, if he wants to save the nigger,” came again from the crowd.
“Certainly,” assented Carteret. “Mr. Delamere can have no possible objection to taking the oath. Is there a notary public present, or a justice of the peace?”
A man stepped forward. “I am a justice of the peace,” he announced.
“Very well, Mr. Smith,” said Carteret, recognizing the speaker. “With your permission, I will formulate the oath, and Mr. Delamere may repeat it after me, if he will. I solemnly swear,”—
“I solemnly swear,”—
Mr. Delamere’s voice might have come from the tomb, so hollow and unnatural did it sound.
“So help me God,”—
“So help me God,”—
“That the negro Sandy Campbell, now in jail on the charge of murder, robbery, and assault, was in my presence last night between the hours of eight and two o’clock.”
Mr. Delamere repeated this statement in a firm voice; but to Ellis, who was in the secret, his words fell upon the ear like clods dropping upon the coffin in an open grave.
“I wish to add,” said General Belmont, stepping forward, “that it is not our intention to interfere, by anything which may be done at this meeting, with the orderly process of the law, or to advise the prisoner’s immediate release. The prisoner will remain in custody, Mr. Delamere, Major Carteret, and I guaranteeing that he will be proved entirely innocent at the preliminary hearing tomorrow morning.”
Several of those present looked relieved; others were plainly, disappointed; but when the meeting ended, the news went out that the lynching had been given up. Carteret immediately wrote and had struck off a handbill giving a brief statement of the proceedings, and sent out a dozen boys to distribute copies among the people in the streets. That no precaution might be omitted, a call was issued to the Wellington Grays, the crack independent military company of the city, who in an incredibly short time were on guard at the jail. Thus a slight change in the point of view had demonstrated the entire ability of the leading citizens to maintain the dignified and orderly processes of the law whenever they saw fit to do so.
The night passed without disorder, beyond the somewhat rough handling of two or three careless negroes that came in the way of small parties of the disappointed who had sought alcoholic consolation.
At ten o’clock the next morning, a preliminary hearing of the charge against Campbell was had before a magistrate. Mr. Delamere, perceptibly older and more wizened than he had seemed the day before, and leaning heavily on the arm of a servant, repeated his statement of the evening before. Only one or two witnesses were called, among whom was Mr. Ellis, who swore positively that in his opinion the prisoner was not the man whom he had seen and at first supposed to be Campbell. The most sensational piece of testimony was that of Dr. Price, who had examined the body, and who swore that the wound in the head was not necessarily fatal, and might have been due to a fall—that she had more than likely died of shock attendant upon the robbery, she being of advanced age and feeble health. There was no evidence, he said, of any other personal violence.
Sandy was not even bound over to the grand jury, but was discharged upon the ground that there was not sufficient evidence upon which to hold him. Upon his release he received the congratulations of many present, some of whom would cheerfully have done him to death a few hours before. With the childish fickleness of a mob, they now experienced a satisfaction almost as great as, though less exciting than, that attendant upon taking life. We speak of the mysteries of inanimate nature. The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image. Sandy, having thus escaped from the Mr. Hyde of the mob, now received the
