Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 185

ment mail, but of a free government of free men too, so long as the

government remembered to let men live free, not under it but beside it;

That was the lock; they put it on the jail. They did it quickly, not even

waiting until a messenger could have got back from the Holston House with

old Alec's permission to remove it from the mail-pouch or use it for the

new purpose. Not that he would have objected on principle nor refused his

permission except by simple instinct; that is, he would probably have been

the first to suggest the lock if he had known in time or thought of it

first, but he would have refused at once if he thought the thing was

contemplated without consulting him. Which everybody in the settlement

knew, though this was not at all why they didn't wait for the messenger.

In fact, no messenger had ever been sent to old Alec; they didn't have

time to send one, let alone wait until he got back; they didn't want the

lock to keep the bandits in, since (as was later proved) the old lock

would have been no more obstacle for the bandits to pass than the

customary wooden bar; they didn't need the lock to protect the settlement

from the bandits, but to protect the bandits from the settlement. Because

the prisoners had barely reached the settlement when it developed that

there was a faction bent on lynching them at once, out of hand, without

preliminary-a small but determined gang which tried to wrest the prisoners

from their captors while the militia was still trying to find someone to

surrender them to, and would have succeeded except for a man named

Compson, who had come to the settlement a few years ago with a racehorse,

which he swapped to Ikkemoutubbe, Issetibbeha's successor in the

chiefship, for a square mile of what was to be the most valuable land in

the future town of Jefferson, who, legend said, drew a pistol and held the

ravishers at bay until the bandits could be got into the jail and the

auger holes bored and someone sent to fetch old Alec Holston's lock.

Because there were indeed new names and faces too in the settlement

now-faces so new as to have (to the older residents) no discernible

antecedents other than mammalinity, nor past other than the simple years

which had scored them; and names so new as to have no discernible (nor

discoverable either) antecedents or past at all, as though they had been

invented yesterday, report dividing again: to the effect that there were

more people in the settlement that day than the militia sergeant whom one

or all of the bandits might recognise;

So Compson locked the jail, and a courier with the two best horses in the

settlement-one to ride and one to lead-cut