One voice,
shouting with frenzied violence, prefaced the general uproar; there was
the crashing of shattered wood.
The rifles barked angrily.
"My God, North! I've been afraid of it!" Corson lamented. "You have
crowded 'em too hard!"
"I'm going by the law, Corson! The election law! The statute law! And the
riot laws of this state! The law says a mob must be put down!"
An immediate and reassuring silence suggested that the law had prevailed
and that a mob had been put down in this instance. Corson, whose face was
white and whose eyes were distended, voiced that conviction. "If a gang
had been able to get in they'd be howling their heads off. But it was
quick over!"
The men in the Executive Chamber stood in their tracks and exchanged
troubled glances in silence.
"Amos, what are you waiting for?" demanded His Excellency.
"For a report--an official report on the matter," mumbled the
adjutant-general, steadying his trembling hands by shoving them inside his
sword-belt.
"Go down and find out what it all means."
"I can save time by telephoning to the watchman's room," demurred Totten.
"Incidentally saving your skin!" the Governor rapped back. "But I don't
care how you get the information, if only you get it and get it sudden!"
Totten went to the house telephone in the private secretary's room and
called and waited; he called again and waited.
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