Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/27

6 railway station, where her husband must alight. Here she found that his train had missed connections and would not arrive for some hours. Desirous of informing the populace that the cause of delay was accidental, and not dilatory tactics on her husband's part, she turned her tired horse's head and drove rapidly back to Marion. Evening had fallen when she reached there and the crowds of the day had been increased by numbers of farmers from the outskirts. The atmosphere was charged with the dangerous explosive of revolt.

At first sight of her buggy the riotous crowds surrounded it and demanded to know why her husband had failed to appear. Her voice was inaudible above the din and Captain Swindell, Sheriff of the County, and Colonel White, then Clerk of the Court, exerted themselves unavailingly to pacify the mob. It was not until the Sheriff stood up in her buggy and urged the crowd to disperse, assuring them that Logan would be there to address them in the morning, that the deafening clamor could be quelled and Mary Logan released from her position of peril.

Then rejecting all offers of a substitute to convey to her husband the condition of affairs, as well as all her father's pleading to return to her home and rest for the night, Mrs. Logan trembling with fatigue and anxiety, once more set out alone on the long drive to Carbondale, twenty-two miles distant. At two in the morning the train arrived and Mrs. Logan rapidly reviewed the situation to her husband. "Very well," said he quietly as he got into the buggy, "Now, Mary, you get out and stay here and rest in Carbondale with friends for a few days. If there is any danger in Marion I don't want you to be there." But Mrs. Logan was not of that calibre; she smiled up at him, took the whip and reins and started the horse. "My dear, I did not marry you to share in the sunshine of life and desert you when clouds gathered above us," she said simply.