The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

"Firemen" arrive at Popeye's mother's boarding house to discover his grandmother in the attic, "stamping out a fire of excelsior in the center of the floor" (305). The last time they arrive there, the house is engulfed in flames.

This is the "neighbor" who turns in a fire alarm when Popeye's grandmother sets a fire in the attic (305).

The narrator calls the people who board with Popeye's mother "clients" (304). None are described in any detail, but we know they include some "old ones" and one man who finds two fires in his room. The day after firemen discover Popeye's grandmother with a fire in the attic, "all the clients left" (305).

Within a few hours after Lee is convicted - formally for Tommy's murder, and in the minds of the townspeople for Temple's rape - the crowd that gathers in the Square turns into a lynch mob of "antic" figures who burn him to death (296). We see the confused scene through Horace's eyes. He registers running men, "panting shouts," a "circle" that has gathered around a "blazing mass" (295-96), but only one member of the mob is individualized: a man "carrying a five-gallon coal oil can" which explodes in his hands.

Horace sees but cannot hear this "gesticulant" man in "his shirt sleeves" haranguing the crowd that gathers in front of the jail after Lee Goodwin is convicted (293). While it seems certain that he is inciting them to violence against Lee, the crowd remains "quite orderly" after he finishes "talking himself out" (293).

The marshal is identified by his accoutrements: "a broad pale hat, a flash light, a time clock and a pistol" (294). He tries unsuccessfully to disperse the mob that has gathered to lynch Lee Goodwin.

There are "two temporary deputies" at the "entrance to the square" just before Lee is lynched, but although the implication is that they have been deputized to help keep order, they are nowhere to be seen when the lynching occurs (293).

"A fat man, with a broad, dull face," the sheriff arrests Lee in the first half of the novel, and then, just before Lee is lynched, expresses his hope that the crowd outside the jail "wont do anything" (293).

During her testimony, Temple says her mother is dead (285). That is the only time she is mentioned in the novel.

Immediately before questioning Temple during Lee Goodwin's trial, the District Attorney mentions "the gynecologist" who testified earlier about "the most sacred affairs of that most sacred thing in life: womanhood" (283-84).