Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/114

 *sponsible that if the law was to interpose delays, it might become the duty of the citizens to take the execution of justice into their own hands. It was the county judge who first called attention to the danger to the town and county that lurked in such loose talk, indulged in at the start by idle men and boys, but working as a leaven that might finally affect the entire community.

"There's just the material down there to give your town a blacker tragedy than it's had yet," he said to McManus one day after court. "The guilty had better go unpunished than be punished through violation of the law."

McManus turned sharply, with that nervous quickness that made him forget the judge in the speaker:

"The guilty! The guilty! No man is guilty till the law has found him so! How long since suspicion was proof?"

The judge, who appreciated the strain which the death of his partner and friend had thrown upon McManus, let the brusqueness of the answer pass, but still was insistent: