It was not
until Sam Yesler rose to speak upon that report that the pent-up storm
broke loose.
He stood there in the careless garb of the cattleman, a strong clean-cut
figure as one would see in a day's ride, facing with unflinching steel-blue
eyes the tempest of human passion he had evoked. The babel of voices rose
and fell and rose again before he could find a chance to make himself
heard. In the gallery two quietly dressed young, women, one of them with
her arm in a sling, leaned forward breathlessly and waited Laska's eyes
glowed with deep fire. She was living her hour of hours, and the man who
stood with such quiet courage the focus of that roar of rage was the hero
of it.
"You call me Judas, and I ask you what Christ I have betrayed. You call me
traitor, but traitor to what? Like you, I am under oath to receive no
compensation for my services here other than that allowed by law. To that
oath I have been true. Have you?
"For many weeks we have been living in a carnival of bribery, in a
debauched hysteria of money-madness. The souls of men have been sifted as
by fire.
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