ect, hold a trial, pass sentence, and execute the accused without actual legal officers being present ("vigilantes" Microsoft Encarta Enc.). When Peter Wilkes family and friends go to his grave to check for his tattoo they shout, "We'll do it, and if we don't find those marks we'll lynch the whole gang". This was because if the Duke and Dauphin were lying about his tattoo, then it meant they were conning them out of lots of money. Peter's daughter yelled, "The brute! Come don't waste a minute-not a second-we'll have them tarred and feathered, and thrown in the river"! (Twain 169-182) Lynching is the killing of an alleged offender by an individual or group having no legal authority (Hutchinson Encyclopedia 456). When the Duke and Dauphin were warned to flee a town they had been previously conning people
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