Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/108

 There he was, then—Tom Warren, about to cross the Rubicon! A historical moment! Fraught, as the historians say, with mighty consequences.

If you could have put your face down between him and his toupee, you would have seen that his eyes were focused on nothing nearer than the center of the earth. He was concentrated on an invisible perplexity. And his problem was this: A county sheriff in the town of Middleburg, in the southern extremity of the state, had telephoned to the Governor that the farmers of the district were arming to come in to Middleburg, that night, to break open the jail and lynch some negroes. The Governor was out of the state, on his way east to a political conference, and the sheriff's warning had been sent to Warren from the State-house. Warren, having elected the Governor on a law-enforcement platform, was busy with a campaign to have him nominated for the Presidency, with the reversion to himself of a place in the Cabinet. Middleburg was the Governor's home town, and a lynching there might be used by his political enemies and his party rivals to give him "a black eye" nationally.

How? Well, if the Governor was to show himself a man of conspicuous strength before the nation, he would either have to prevent the lynching with armed force—and perhaps kill some of the