igh over the table and descended crashing
upon it. "It's a damn lie!" he roared. "Martin Pike owns Beaver
Beach!"

XXIII

JOE WALKS ACROSS THE COURT-HOUSE YARD

From within the glossy old walnut bar that ran from wall to wall, the
eyes of the lawyers and reporters wandered often to Ariel as she sat in
the packed court-room watching Louden's fight for the life and liberty
of Happy Fear. She had always three escorts, and though she did not
miss a session, and the same three never failed to attend her, no
whisper of scandal arose. But not upon them did the glances of the
members of the bar and the journalists with tender frequency linger;
nor were the younger members of these two professions all who gazed
that way. Joe had fought out the selection of the jury with the
prosecutor at great length and with infinite pains; it was not a young
jury, and IT stared at her. The "Court" wore a gray beard with which a
flock of sparrows might have villaged a grove, and yet, in spite of the
vital necessity for watchfulness over this fighting case, IT once
needed to be stirred from a trancelike gaze in Miss Tabor's direction
and aroused to the realization that It was there to Sit and not to
dream.

The August air was warm outside the windows, inviting to the open
country, to swimmin'-hole, to orchard reveries, or shaded pool wherein
to drop a meditative line; you would have thought no one could
willingly coop himself in this hot room for three hours, twice a day,
while lawyers wrangled, often unintelligibly, over the life of a dingy
little creature like Happy Fear, yet the struggle to swelter there was
almost like a riot, and the bailiffs were busy men.

It was a fighting case throughout, fought to a finish on each tiny
point as it came up, dragging, in the mere matter of time,
interminably, yet the people of Canaan (not only those who succeeded in
penetrating to the court-room, but the others who hung about the
corridors, or outside the building, and the great mass of stay-at-homes
who read the story in the Tocsin) found each moment of it enthralling
enough. The State's attorney, fearful of losing so notorious a case,
and not underestimating his opponent, had modestly summoned others to
his aid; and the attorney for the defence, single-handed, faced "an
array of legal talent such as seldom indeed had hollered at this bar";
faced it good-naturedly, an eyebrow crooked up and his head on one
side, most of the time, yet fa