Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ No one moved in the court room for appreciable seconds after that pronouncement. As a flash-light photograph fixes an assemblage poised, with eyes staring in one direction, thus the half-breed’s words had cast a spell of immobility over all. It was a stillness fraught with danger. No man could say in what violent form it might break.
First to recover from the surprise was the sheriff. “You, Jim, set down!” he shouted. “If there’s to be any accusin’ done here, I’ll do it.”
“I do it,” persisted the half-breed. “Blood is on his han’. I see it.”
Involuntarily Sedgwick looked at his right hand. ”

“ He threw in the clutch, leaving Schlager with his hand in his hair, and the crowd, which might so easily have become a mob, to disperse, slowly and hesitantly, having lacked the incentive of suggested flight on the part of the suspects to be spark to its powder. ”