In a sweltering county jail, a weary sheriff faces a mob bent on lynching Sam Blake, an unconscious prisoner accused of murdering Kittinger in Bethel. The case seems open and shut: the sheriff arrived to find Kittinger freshly dead, Blake lying unconscious in an abandoned blacksmith shop across the road, a rifle and shell nearby, all pointing to a guilty flight gone wrong. Yet the sheriff's grim skepticism lingers, even as the crowd outside grows louder, fueled by Kittinger's relatives, neighbors, revenge, politics, and the conviction that Blake's capture was the "hand o' Gawd." As the mob prepares to batter down the jail with a log cart, the sheriff, who despises both lynching and Blake himself, refuses to surrender a man in his custody. Blake remains drunk, helpless, and unaware, making the demand for public vengeance even more brutal and grotesque. The story builds toward a violent confrontation, probing the uneasy line between justice and mob rule, and the moral compromises demanded of those sworn to keep order. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.