Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1908-03-20

Half the men there were upon theil
, feet at once. Gilbert Senn's life hung
in the balance Men have died again
and again at the hands Of others less
fully convinced of guilt and less in
furiated than these were.
Gilbert Sem escaped
How?
Not because of the authority OF the
, Judge being exercised in his behalf;
the judge was panic stricken and pow
erless.
Not because the sheriff stood between
him and danger: the sheriff did not
care to take the lives Of such earnest
men as those VINO faced him-men
with whom he had been acquainted for
many long years-in defense Of one
whose life he felt ought to be forfeit.
They could have taken Sem out from
the courtroom, and have hanged him
to a learlless tree near the window,
from which the judge could look to his
lhome. to the schOolhOuse and to the
church, and no one among those having
Authority there could have prevented
lit. Perhaps no one of them all would
have found sense and realized duty un-
til too late to even make an attempt.
But Gilbert Sem escaped. Walter
Aldrich rose to his feet. The lawyer
was pale as death. He laid his arm
protectingly along the shoulders Of the
prisoner His gaze swept over the ar
ray of angry faces before him.
do not suppose that Walter Aldrich
was armed 1 have no idea that he
could have kept Sem from the hands
of men who had decided to take him,
had they proceeded to act upon that
fought for his client. He would have
found fighting Of little use.
The angry men faced Sem. But they
did not face Sem alone; Aldrich stood
before them, too, a wall between them
and the horrible realization Of their de-
sire-not strong wall-not a wall diff
ficult to pass-but a firm and steadfast
one so far as it's strength did extend
a wall that would not go down until
the shock came.
The angry men faced the two men.
All was silent. 1t was the silence of a
hot afternoon before the tornado
strikes: the silence of the battlefield
before the charge: the silence Of the
forest glade before the lurking beast
springs upon his timid foe; the intense
silence which means danger and death
always-whether the pause be mans,
beasts of inanimate natures.
These men were thinking Of their
homes, Of their own wives, Of their lit
tie children, of the nights when their
loved ones had been alone at home ex-
posed to the possibility of dangers as
great and fates as tragic as had been
the lot of Constance Craig. For time
every other thought had vanished from
their minds save only the mad one that
safety and security could only settle
down upon Boomville again when Gill
| bert Sem was dead.
And still Aldrich faced them. Still
no word was said by any one.
Then, suddenly, some man found his
senses. 1t may be that he remembered
the cruel wrong which Sem had done
Aldrich, and felt ashamed to find him.
self less forgiving than the man who
had so truly suffered at Senn's hands
1t may be his thought took some other
form. l do not know. l cannot say
The great God knows.
One man sank back into his seat,
whatever the thought which struck
him down. Then another sat down,
and another. and another, and dozen,
| a score
And Sem was safe again! Walter
Aldrich had saved his life once more!
| 1t was but a little thing. But moral
force is a mighty force-and a silent
| one.
1t had not been minute since Priers
statement had so stirred the hearts of
the spectators, and now they were all
| in their seats again-quiet-calm calm-si-
lent.
The judge and his officers said some
simple things regarding order in court.
It is not recorded that mob came
near taking an unconvicted man out
from the very room in which he was
having a trial according to the forms
until he was dead. Such a statement
| in the records of a court Of justice
would look strange. Probably neither
the judge, nor the sheriff, nor the sher-
lifts deputies, would willingly admit
that such was the fact
But 1t was.
Perhaps neither Prler nor the prose-
cutting attorney would say that their
carefully planned climax Of evidence
came near defeating the ends of JUS
tice, and making many men murderers,
in fact, in place of the one man they
aimed to prove guilty.
But it did
Undoubtedly the good citizens of
Boomville-for they were the good cit
izens-would shrink from the recital Of
the unpleasant facts Of the case. They
would not like to confess that they for
got for little, how many cooling CEN
turies of civilization lay between them
and their hotbloOded ancestors, who
practiced the doctrine of IAN eye for
an eye and a tooth for tooth in all
its horrible perfection and lteralness.
But they did forget
The danger was none the less. that
it was in the midst of silence; it was
none the less, that it was soon over.
The fact that judge, and jury, and
sheriff, and deputies, and spectators,
and Witnesses and prosecuting attor
ney and ALL practically ignored the
danger which had existed-ignored it
and spoke slightingly of it's possibility
when it was Over-made it none the
less. The fact that other men, in 9TH
er courts, at other times have felt as
these men did while justice has gone
on unnoticing and blinded-as it did
here-made the danger none the less.
There was danger, real danger des-