The inhabitants of the city could never imagine the vast interest
aroused in the county of Gullmore by the trial of Colonel Moseby Allen
for embezzlement. In all their quiet lives the good citizens had not
been treated to such a sweeping tidal wave of excitement. The annual
visits of the "greatest show on earth" were scarcely able to fan the
interests of the countrymen into such a flame. The news of Allen's
arrest had spread through the country like wildfire. Men had talked
of nothing else from the moment this startling information had come to
their ears. The crowds on Saturday afternoons at the country store had
constituted themselves courts of first and last resort, and had passed
on the matter of the ex-sheriff's guilt at great length and with
great show of learning. The village blacksmith had delivered ponderous
opinions while he shod the traveller's horse; and the ubiquitous justice
of the peace had demonstrated time and again with huge solemnity that
Moseby Allen was a great criminal, and by no possible means could be
saved from conviction. It was the general belief that the ex-sheriff
would not stand trial; that he would by some means escape from the jail
where he was confined. So firm-rooted had this conviction become that
the great crowd gathered in the little county seat on the day fixed
for the trial were considerably astonished when they saw the ex-sheriff
sitting in the dock. In the evening after the first day of the trial,
in which certain wholly unexpected things had come to pass, the crowd
gathered on the porch of the country hotel were fairly revelling in the
huge sensation.
Duncan Hatfield, a long ungainly mountaineer, wearing a red
hunting-shirt and a pair of blue jeans trousers, was evidently the
Sir-Oracle of the occasion.
"I tell you, boys," he was saying, "old Moseby aint got no more show
than a calliker apron in a brush fire. Why he jest laid down and give
up; jest naturally lopped his ears and give up like a whipped dog."
"Yes," put in an old farmer who was standing a little back in the crowd,
"I reckon nobody calkerlated on jest sich a fizzle."
"When he come into court this mornin'," continued the Oracle, "with that
there young lawyer man Edwards, I poked Lum Bozier in the side, and told
him to keep his eye skinned, and he would see the fur fly, because I
knowed that Sam Lynch, the prosecutin' attorney, allowed to go fer old
Moseby, and Sam is a fire-eater, so he is, and he aint afraid of nuthin
that walks on legs. But, Jerusalem! it war the tamest show that ever
come to this yer town. Edwards jest sot down and lopped over like a
weed, and Sam he begun, and he showed up how old Moseby had planned this
here thing, and how he had lied to Jake Wade all the way through, and
jest how he got that there money, and what an everlasting old rascal
he was, and there sot Edwards, and he never asked no questions, and he
never paid no attention to nuthin."
"Did n't the lawyer feller do nuthin at all, Dunk?" enquired one of
the audience, who had evidently suffered the great misfortune of being
absent from the trial.
"No," answered the Oracle, with a bovine sneer, "he never did nothin
till late this evenin. Then he untangled his legs and got up and said
somethin to the jedge about havin to let old Moseby Allen go, cause what
he had done was n't no crime.
"Then you ought to a heard Sam. He jest naturally took the roof off;
he sailed into old Moseby. He called him nine different kinds of
horse-thieves, and when he got through, I could see old Ampe Props
noddin his head back thar in the jury-box, and then I knowed that it
were all up with Colonel Moseby Allen, cause that jury will go the way
old Ampe goes, jest like a pack of sheep."
"I reckon Moseby's lawyer were skeered out," suggested Pooley Hornick,
the blacksmith.
"I reckon he war," continued the Oracle, "cause when Sam sot down, he
got up, and he said to the jedge that he didn't want to do no argufying,
but he had a little paper that would show why the jedge would have to
let old Moseby go free, and then he asked Sam if he wanted to see it,
and Sam he said no, he cared nuthin for his little paper. Then the
feller went over and give the little paper to the jedge, and the jedge
he took it and he said he would decide in the mornin'."
"You don't reckon," said the farmer, "that the jedge will give the old
colonel any show, do you?"
"Billdad Solsberry," said the Oracle, with a grave judicial air, as
though to settle the matter beyond question, "you are a plumb fool. If
the angel Gabriel war to drop down into Gullmore county, he could n't
keep old Moseby Allen from goin' to the penitentiary."
Thus the good citizens sat in judgment, and foretold the doom of their
fellow.