left, and studied the man in whose hands he thought that his fate
rested. He watched the squire's pen go from paper to ink, ink to
paper, and listened to its scratch, scratch, and to the buzz of a
big fly against the dirty window-pane. Ashamed to look at any one,
he looked at the lawyer's big ink-well--a great, circular affair of
mottled brown wood. It had several openings, each one with its own
little cork attached with a short string to the side of the stand.
He had never seen one like it before.
Then some one entered the room. Jim, looking sidewise, recognized
Jake Hibbard, and began covertly to study his face. He knew that
this flabby-faced, dirty man, with the little screwed-up eyes, and
the big screwed-up mouth, stained brown at the corners with tobacco,
was Pete Lamoury's lawyer. Familiar for many years to his
contemptuous young eyes, Jake now looked sinister and dangerous.
What were these men going to do to him?
Amid his fluttering emotions and rushing thoughts one thing only
stood fixed and clear: he would not tell on his father. Some day,
when all trouble was past, he would let his father know that he knew
all the time. Then he guessed his father would be sorry and ashamed.
Now, since his father would not take him into his confidence, he
would not pretend he did the shooting. That would be his only
revenge.
Finally, Squire Tucker, pushing his writing aside, ran his fingers
through the great mass of his tumbled gray hair, and looked
quizzically at Jim over his glasses. "So this," he said, "is the
hardened ruffian of whom our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Lamoury,
complains?"
And indeed Jim, although stubborn, did not seem very dangerous.
The squire looked about the room.
"Is he represented by counsel?" he asked.
"No, I represent him," said Mr. Edwards.
"The charge against him is assault with intent to kill, I believe?"
and he looked with demure inquiry at Jake Hibbard, who nodded with a
wrath-clouded face. Tucker was not taking the case seriously.
"Well, young man," said the justice to Jim, "what's your
explanation of this?"
"We'll waive examination," said Mr. Edwards, briefly.
The squire leaned back in his chair. "I suppose," he said, with
evident reluctance, "I shall have to hold him for the grand jury.
But I guess the safety of the community won't be greatly threatened
if I let him out on bail. I should think a couple of hundred would
do. I suppose there'll be no difficulty about the bond?"
The tone of the proceedings suited Mr. Peaslee well. In his
nervousness and abstraction he had backed up to the rusty, empty
iron stove at the end of the room, and stood there, with spread
coat-tails, listening intently. On hearing the amount of bail, he
gave a sigh of relief. His incautious offer had brought him no
dangerous risk.
Mr. Edwards, however, did not answer. Instead, consulting the
justice with a look, he turned and beckoned Jim to follow him into
the hall.
"James," he said, "this is the last chance I shall give you. If you
confess to me, I will see that you have proper bail. If you do not,
I shall let the law take its course. You may choose."
Jim was exasperated. If his father wished to be mean, let him _be_
mean; at least he might drop this farce, this irritating pretense.
He lost his temper.
"I don't care what you do!" he said fiercely. "Send me to jail if
you want to. I guess I can stand it!"
"Is that all you have to say?"
Jim replied with a rebellious glance.
"Very well," said his father. "Then we will go back." Once in the
room, he stepped to the squire's desk, and talked with him in low
tones.
Then the justice turned to Jim again, a new gravity in his jolly
face.
"Your father," he said, "refuses to go on your bond. Have you any
sureties of your own to offer?"
"No, sir," said Jim.
Mr. Peaslee was outraged. What kind of a father was this! He half
started forward to offer to be one of the two sureties which the law
required, but--no, he dare not. The second surety might prove to be
any sort of worthless fellow. But Jim in jail! He had not for a
moment dreamed of that. He was very indignant with Mr. Edwards.
Meanwhile, Jake Hibbard was studying Mr. Edwards's face with puzzled
attention. He had supposed that the lumber dealer, whom he knew to
be well-to-do, would have paid anything, signed any bond, to protect
his boy from jail. He was disconcerted. He drew his one hand across
his mouth nervously.
"Well, Mr. Barton," said Squire Tucker, "I don't see but what you'll
have to take this young man over to Hotel Calkins."
"Hotel Calkins" was the name which local wit gave to the county
jail. The words sent a cold shiver down Mr. Peaslee's back. They
stung him into generosity. As Barton and his prisoner, followed by
Mr. Edwards and Jake, brushed by him on their way to the door, he
slipped the knife into Jim's hand. When the boy, trying to keep back
the tears, looked up inquiringly, he murmured, in agitation:--
"Don't ye care, sonny! Now don't ye care!"
He was greatly stirred--or he would not have been so incautious as
to make his present in person and in public.
[Illustration: Cat lying on fence.]
IV
When Nancy Ware, Jim's pretty teacher, heard that Mr. Edwards had
let Jim go to jail, she was hotly indignant. She liked Jim, and
laughed a little over him, for she knew he adored her. In her view
he was a clumsy, nice boy; awkward and shy, to be sure, but
rewarding her friendliness now and then with a really entrancing
grin. She liked his imagination, she liked his loyalty, and she
liked his dogged resolution.
She heard the news at the noon hour on Monday, and after her dinner
she hurried at once to the store of Fred Farnsworth. To him she
roundly declared that Mr. Edwards was a brute, a view of the man
which struck Fred as a bit highly colored.
Fred was thirty-one or thirty-two years old, a sensible, humorous
fellow, with considerable personal force. He was very proud of the
handsome shop over which hung the sign, "Frederick W. Farnsworth,
Fine Crockery and Glassware," and still prouder of his engagement to
Miss Ware. He was the second grand juryman from Ellmington.
"Oh," said he, "Edwards isn't a bad sort of man. He isn't very
sociable. I guess he wouldn't take much impudence, even from that
boy of his. They say Jim wouldn't own up, and the old man won't do
anything for him till he does."
"If Jimmie Edwards says he didn't fire that gun, he didn't," said
Nancy, positively. "Jimmie isn't the lying kind. I know Mr.
Edwards. I ought not to call him a brute, I suppose. But he's one
of these obstinate men who will do anything they've made up their
minds to do, even if you prove to them that they're wrong, even if
it hurts them more than it does any one else. He's just got it into
his head that Jimmie ought to confess, and he'd let him go to the
gallows before he'd back down."
Nancy spoke with animation, her color rose and her eyes grew bright,
and Fred looked and listened admiringly. He was skeptical about Jim,
but he was struck with the accuracy of the portrait of Edwards.
"I guess that's about so," he said.
"And when I think of that poor boy shut up in that awful jail,
locked into a cell, when he ought to be out-of-doors playing ball
and having a good time, it makes my blood boil!" continued Miss
Ware. "Now, Fred," she concluded, with pretty decision, "you must
stop it."
Fred laughed.
"Isn't that a pretty large order?" he asked. "Squire Tucker put him
there. I guess it's legal."
"You can do _something_," said his betrothed. "Go to see Jimmie. See
if you can't find out what's the matter. Jimmie likes you, perhaps
he'll tell."
"I didn't know Jim had any particular partiality for me," said Fred,
but he felt kindlier toward the boy in spite of himself.
"If you can only find out what really happened, I know we can get
him out," averred Miss Ware.
"Why don't you go yourself?" said Farnsworth.
"I can't,--not till five o'clock. Of course I'm going then!"
"That's about four hours off," said Farnsworth.
"But I want something done _now_!" exclaimed Nancy.
"Oh!" said Fred, humorously.
"Will you go?"
"Of course. I'll start at once." Fred dropped his banter. "I'll tell
you what, Nancy. I may not be able to do much right off, but I'll
promise you that he has a fair chance before the grand jury."
Farnsworth started at once for the jail. It was a poor place for a
boy, he reflected, as he rang the jailer's private bell. Calkins
himself was not there, and his wife came to the door. She knew
Farnsworth; and when he asked if he might see Jim she laughed a
little, and told him to "step right in."
"Hotel Calkins" was a brick building which looked pleasantly like a
private dwelling, as, in fact, a good half of it was. In this front
half dwelt the jailer; in the rear half, separated from the living
quarters by a thick wall and heavy doors, was the jail proper. There
Farnsworth expected to be led.
But not at all! Mrs. Calkins ushered him into her own kitchen, where
a wash-tub showed what she was doing, where the afternoon sun and
sweet September air poured in at the open windows, and where a
canary in its cage was singing cheerily.
Here Farnsworth was much surprised to see Jim, curled up in Mrs.
Calkins's own rocking-chair, eating a large red-cheeked apple which
he was dividing with a brand-new knife!
"Squire Tucker told Mark," said Mrs. Calkins, enjoying the joke,
"that he guessed James would like our society full as well as that
of the prisoners."
As for Jim, he grinned affably, and took another slice of his apple.
The awful picture which Miss Ware had drawn of Jim's dreadful
isolation and misery and her own indignant sympathy rushed upon
Farnsworth's mind, and were so comically out of relation with the
facts that he sank weakly into the nearest chair and roared.
"This--is--the way--you go to jail--is it?" he gasped.
Mrs. Calkins smiled in sympathy, and Jim, half-suspecting that he
ought to be offended at this frank mirth, looked sheepishly at the
floor.
Farnsworth recovered himself. "A mighty good friend of yours," he
said, "sent me over here."
"Miss Ware?" asked Jim, much pleased.
"Yes. She's coming herself right after school, loaded down with
things to console your desolate prison life, I believe," and
Farnsworth had to stop to laugh again. "But she wanted me to start
right in and help you out of this, and that's what I'm here for."
"Thank you," said Jim, embarrassed, but polite. But it struck
Farnsworth, as he said afterward, that the boy "shied" a little.
"Miss Ware says," he went on, "that she doesn't believe you fired
that shot, and she wants you to tell me exactly what did happen. Now
if we can show that you didn't shoot, I can get you out of here
quick."
"What they going to do to me?" said Jim.
"That depends. It makes a difference how much Lamoury's hurt. The
penalty might be severe if he's got a bad wound. But even then, if
we could show that you didn't know he was there, or that the gun
went off by accident, or that you were firing at something else, it
would make a big difference. And if you can show that you weren't
there at all--why, out you go, scot-free. But, Jim, you can see
yourself that if you don't tell what you know, everybody'll think
that you shot and meant to hurt Lamoury, and then it might go pretty
hard with you. Now come, tell me what happened."
"You'd better tell, Jimmie," said Mrs. Calkins, straightening up
from her wash-tub. "You won't find any better friends than Mr.
Farnsworth and Miss Ware."
The young man, as he talked, watched the boy curiously. Jim flushed
and squirmed, and looked now at the floor and now out at the window,
with a marked uneasiness and embarrassment that greatly puzzled his
friend. And when he stopped, and the boy had to answer, his distress
became really pitiable.
"Can't you tell me, Jim?" Mr. Farnsworth hazarded, after a little,
putting a kindly hand on the boy's arm, while Mrs. Calkins stood
quiet by her tub in friendly expectation.
But Jim remained dumb.
After waiting a little, Farnsworth, seeing the boy so miserable,
took pity on him.
"Well, never mind, Jim," he said. "You needn't tell if you don't
want to."
He would have to let Nancy coax it out of him. But he was puzzled,
impressed with a sense of mystery and with a growing conviction that
the boy was shielding some one else. He began to talk cheerfully of
other things, hoping that Jim might perhaps drop a useful hint, or,
at least, that the boy would gain confidence in him as a friend. By
chance he asked:--
"Where did you get the knife, Jim?"
"Mr. Peaslee gave it to me."
"Peaslee!" exclaimed Farnsworth. He well knew the "closeness" of his
fellow juror.
"It isn't much of a knife," said Jim, apologetic but pleased. Jim's
views of the world were changing: his father, although a bandit
chief, had let him go to jail, while this stingy old man, with no
halo of adventure about him, gave him a knife; and here were Miss
Ware and Mr. Farnsworth and Mrs. Calkins and the jailer, none of
them smugglers, who were very kind.
Farnsworth rose to go. Then Jim, summoning all his courage, asked a
question which had long been trembling on his lips.
"What do they do to smugglers, Mr. Farnsworth?"
"Fine 'em, or put 'em in jail, or both. Why?"
"Nothing much," said Jim, but obviously he was cast down.
Farnsworth walked thoughtfully toward his store. "By George!" he
thought suddenly. "I wonder--"
The gossip about the senior Edwards had occurred to him, and at the
same time he remembered the quarrel with Lamoury.
"But what nonsense!" he thought. "If Edwards wanted to shoot any one
he wouldn't do it in his own back yard, and he wouldn't treat his
own boy that way, either." Still, the idea clung to him.
And then he thought of Nancy, and chuckled. "If she comes to the
store before she goes to the jail I won't tell her what she'll find
there," he promised himself.
Meanwhile, Mr. Peaslee felt a growing discomfort. He ate his dinner
and answered the brisk questions of his wife with increasing
preoccupation. Like Miss Ware, he was picturing Jim solitary and
suffering in his lonely cell. With the utmost sincerity and
ingenuousness he condemned Mr. Edwards.
"Hain't he got any feelin' for his own flesh and blood?" he asked
himself. "'T ain't right; somebody'd ought to deal with him."
As he pottered about his yard after dinner, he finally worked
himself up to the point of speaking to Edwards himself.
Even his righteous indignation would not have led him to this
undertaking had he known Mr. Edwards better, or realized the
father's present mood. Hurt exceedingly by Jim's lying and contempt
of his wishes, hurt even more through his disappointed desire to
help his boy, Mr. Edwards was sore and sensitive, discontented both
with Jim and with himself. He did not want Jim in jail, he told
himself; and the neighbors who were so uniformly assuming that he
did might better give their thoughts to matters that concerned them
more. He would get the boy out of jail quick enough if the boy would
only let him.
As he stepped out of the house to do an errand at the barn, Mr.
Peaslee hailed him over the dividing fence. Somewhat put out, Mr.
Edwards nevertheless turned and walked toward his neighbor. Mr.
Peaslee, leaning over the fence, began.
"Ed'ards," he said, reaching out an anxious, deprecatory hand,
"don't ye think you're jest a leetle mite hard on that boy o'
yourn--"
He got no further. Edwards gave him a look that made him shiver, and
cut the conversation short by turning on his heel and marching
toward the barn.
"Dretful ha'sh man, dretful ha'sh!" Mr. Peaslee muttered to himself.
"Nice, likely boy as ever was. If I had a boy like that, I swan I
wouldn't treat him so con-sarned mean!"
He turned away much shocked, and saw the Calico Cat watching him
ironically from the chicken-house. "Drat that cat!" said he. "I
ain't goin' to stay round here--not with that beast grinning at me."
He got his hat and started up-town, not knowing in the least what he
intended to do there. He stopped, however, at every shop window and
studied baseballs, bats, tivoli-boards, accordions. He was beginning
to wonder if a twenty-five-cent knife was enough to console Jim for
his unmerited incarceration.
He was gazing forlornly in at the window of Upham's drugstore, where
some half-dozen harmonicas were displayed, and wondering if Jim
would be allowed to play one in his dungeon cell, when Hibbard
spoke to him.
He drew the lawyer aside, and, peering closely into his face with
anxious eyes exaggerated by his spectacles, said insinuatingly:--
"Jest 'twixt you and me kinder confidential, Pete ain't hurt bad,
is he? You don't mind sayin', do ye?"
Jake drew himself up, surprised and suspicious. Did the old fool
think him as innocent as all that?
"He's hurt bad, Mr. Peaslee, bad," he said, with dignity. "Of
course it isn't fatal--unless it should mortify." He waved his
hand deprecatingly. "I can't imagine what that Edwards boy used
in his gun."
Mr. Peaslee knew: the marble! He trembled. Still, he knew Jake's
reputation. A shrewd thought visited his troubled mind.
"What doctor's seein' him?" he asked.
"Doctor!" exclaimed Hibbard, irritated. "Doctor! You know these
French Canadians. They're worse scared of a doctor than of the
evil one himself. Pete's usin' some old woman's stuff on his
wounds,--bear's grease, rattlesnake oil, catnip tea,--what do I
know? I can't make him see a doctor."
"Some doctor'll have to testify to court, won't they?" persisted
Mr. Peaslee.
"Oh, I'll look out for that, don't you fear!" the lawyer said
easily; but nevertheless he made a pretext for leaving the old man.
Perhaps had Mr. Peaslee's fears not been so keen, he would have
taken some comfort from this conversation; but as it was he felt
that the lawyer was dangerous; he feared that Pete really was badly
hurt. It would go hard, then, with Jim. It would, by the same
token, go hard with himself should he confess.
Suddenly he turned and rushed into Upham's store.
"Upham," said he, "I want _that_!"
And he pointed straight at a big harmonica with a strange and
wonderful "harp attachment"--bright-colored and of amazing
possibilities.
Upham, a neat little gentleman with nicely trimmed side-whiskers,
who was always fluttered by the unexpected, hesitated, half opened
his mouth, and then forgot either to shut it or to speak.
"Why, Mr. Peaslee," he stammered at last, "it's real expensive!
You--it's two dollars and seventy-five cents."
"Don't care nothin' what it costs," said Mr. Peaslee, who was in a
hurry for fear lest he should think twice.
When he came out of the store with the harmonica in his hands, he
almost stumbled into Miss Ware. She was on her way to Jim, and, of
course, her mind was full of his affairs. Here was Mr. Edwards's
next neighbor. She impulsively stopped to ask if the misguided
father still held to his resolution about Jim.
Mr. Peaslee had reason to know that he did, and said so. "I tell
ye, Miss Ware," said he, with much emotion, "he belongs to a
stony-hearted generation, and that's a fact. He ain't got any
compassion in him, seems though."
"It's a shame, a perfect shame!" exclaimed Nancy.
"'T ain't right," said Mr. Peaslee, with a warmth which surprised
the young woman, and made her warm to this old man, whom she had
always thought so selfish. "'T ain't right--your own flesh and blood
so."
"Well," said Miss Ware, "I'm going to the jail now. I want to see
Jimmie. It must be awful there."
"Well, now, that's real kind of ye," responded Mr. Peaslee. "I
wonder now if you'd mind taking this along to him," and he offered
her the paper parcel. "It's a harmonica, I guess they call it. It's
real handsome. It cost consid'able--a pretty consid'able sum. I feel
kinder sorry for the leetle feller, and I don't grudge it a mite."
And he kept repeating, in a tone which suggested whistling to keep
your courage up, "Not a mite, not a mite."
Miss Ware smothered a laugh on hearing what the present was. She
must not hurt the feelings of this kind old man!
"Oh," said the little hypocrite, "that's nice! Jimmie'll be so
pleased."
But perhaps the harmonica pleased Jim as much as the schoolbooks
which the school-teacher, with a solicitous eye on her pupil's
standing in his studies, was taking to him. Saying good-by to Mr.
Peaslee, Miss Ware, books and harmonica in hand, went on her way to
visit the afflicted boy in his dungeon. Meanwhile Jim, turning the
wringer for Mrs. Calkins, and listening to her stories of "Mark's"
prowess with all sorts of malefactors, was having an excellent time.
He had decided to be a sheriff when he grew up.
[Illustration: Cat curled up on floor.]
V
The day of the assembling of the grand jury for the September term
of the Adams County court finally dawned. How Mr. Peaslee had looked
forward to that day! How often had he pictured the scene--the bustle
about the court house; the agreeable crowd of black-coated lawyers,
with their clever talk, their good stories; the grave judge, and the
still graver side judges; the greetings and hand-shakings amid much
joking and laughter; the county gossip among the grand jurors in the
informal moments before they filed into the courtroom to be sworn
and to receive the judge's charge; himself, finally, in his best
black coat and cherished beaver hat, there in the midst of
it--important, weighty, respected, a public man!
He had cherished the vision of himself walking up the village street
on that first morning, a dignitary returning the cordial and
admiring salutes of his village friends. He had seen himself later
in the jury-room, shrewdly "leading" the reluctant witness,
delivering weighty opinions on the bearing of testimony, and making
all respect him as a marvel of conservatism, dignity, and wisdom.
This was to be one of the most important and pleasurable days of his
life, the rung in a ladder of preferment which reached as high as
the state-house dome!
And when that day came, it rained; steadily, gloomily, fiercely
rained. Solomon was not allowed to wear his best clothes. When,
peering out of the window, he hopefully said he "guessed mebbe 't
was goin' to clear," his wife invited him tartly to "wait till it
did."
She insisted that he put on his every-day clothes, and thus arrayed,
and without meeting a single villager to realize the importance of
his errand, he waded up to the court house, the pelting rain
rattling on his old umbrella, the fierce wind almost wrenching it
inside out.
There was, of course, no parade on the courthouse steps for the
benefit of a wondering village, as there would have been had the day
been fine. Instead, the men, steaming with wet, stood about
uncomfortably in the corridors, muddy with the mud from their feet,
wet with the drip from their umbrellas. The air in the court house
was close, and every one felt uncomfortable and depressed.
Mr. Peaslee, having greeted three or four men whom he knew, found
himself jammed into a corner behind four or five jurors who were
strangers to him, but he was too disheartened to try to scrape
acquaintance with them. He felt lonely and helpless.
He looked enviously over to the other end of the corridor, where
Fred Farnsworth, Eben Sampson, and Albion Small were standing
together. In contrast with the others, these men were laughing.
Albion was "consid'able of a joker," Mr. Peaslee reflected gloomily.
Then old Abijah Keith stormed in, and in his high, shrill voice
began immediately to utter his unfavorable opinion of everything and
everybody.
"Well, if he ain't here again!" exclaimed, in disgust, Hiram
Hopkins, one of the men in front of Solomon. "Cantankerest old
lummux in the whole state--just lots on upsetting things. Abijah!"
he snorted. "Can't Abijah, I call him!"
Mr. Peaslee shrank back into his corner nervously. He knew this old
tyrant and dreaded him.
Not much was done that first day. The clerk swore them; the judge
charged them, and appointed the sensible, steady Sampson foreman.
Then they retired to the jury-room--a big, desolate place, wherein
was a long, ink-spattered table surrounded by wooden armchairs and
spittoons. The grand jurors seated themselves, and were solemnly
silent while John Paige, the state's attorney, began the dull task
of presenting cases. Mr. Peaslee found that he had nothing brilliant
to say.
As a matter of fact, his own troubles were making him see everything
yellow. The jurymen did not seem to him as agreeable a lot as he had
expected, and as for Paige, he irritated Solomon beyond measure.