He recommended I shouldn't use no violence." "I wouldn't recommend you did, either," assented Yancy, but without heat.
"I'd get shut of this here law business, Bob," advised Uncle Sammy.
"Suppose I come to the Cross Roads this evening ?" "That's agreeable," said the deputy, who presently departed in company with Carrington.
Some hours later the male population of Scratch Hill, with a gravity befitting the occasion, prepared itself to descend on the Cross Roads and give its support to Mr.Yancy in his hour of need.

To this end those respectable householders armed themselves, with the idea that it might perhaps be necessary to correct some miscarriage of justice.

They were shy enough and timid enough, these remote dwellers in the pine woods, but, like all wild things, when they felt they were cornered they were prone to fight; and in this instance it was clearly iniquitous that Bob Yancy's right to smack Dave Blount should be questioned.

That denied what was left of human liberty.

But beyond this was a matter of even greater importance: they felt that Yancy's possession of the boy was somehow involved.
Yancy had declared himself simply but specifically on this point.