Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/228

 the bars; scores of eyes tried to peer through the concentric ranks of bars and find the man doomed to die. Impenetrable blackness there.

"To hell with the keys! Here, boys, let me through." It was Jim Hanscomb, the blacksmith, shouldering his way through the crowd. His black-headed sledge was carried over his shoulder. They made a ring for him around the gate to the cell block. The man with the lantern held it high to give light. Another man was directed by the big blacksmith where to hold his cold chisel against the lock.

The room roared with the impact of steel against steel. The mob bayed. Still from the pitchy blackness beyond the inner fence of steel not a sound.

For ten minutes the steel forest of the cell block was clangorous with the crash of sledge. Then the lock gave and the gate bounded open. A snarling cheer and the foremost of the mob pushed into the narrow corridor which ran four sides round the central block of cells.

"Hey, you Killer! We got you now!"

Slowly, inexorably, the lantern marched at the head of a shadowy rank of men, pausing at each door to be upheld, that its light might fall through bars.