on the altar of public service. That was according to his
view. So he notified Hammer that the state would not be ready for trial
on the day set.

This pleased Hammer well enough, for the greater the delay the wider the
notoriety of the case would spread, the larger his audience would be. By
mutual agreement, the case was put over for one month.

Joe protested against this delay in vain. Hammer said that they would
profit by it, as the ferment of the public mind would settle meantime,
and prejudice would not be so sharp. He talked a great deal about
"character witnesses," which Joe couldn't see the need of, and took down
the names of all the people whom Joe could name as having known him all
his life. Then Hammer went his way, to make speeches in the campaign in
support of the worthy sheriff.

So Joe found himself with another month ahead of him before he could
even hope to walk out into the sun again.

Jail was wearing on him. The disgrace of it was torture to his sensitive
mind, without the physical chafing to pull him down to bones. Those two
weeks had taken off his frame a great deal of the flesh that he had
gained during the summer. His gauntness was more pronounced than it ever
had been before.

Mrs. Newbolt walked in twice a week to see him, carrying with her a
basket of biscuits and other homely things dear to her son's palate. All
of which the sheriff speared with knitting-needles, and tried on various
domestic animals, to make certain that the Widow Newbolt did not cheat
the gallows out of its due by concealing saws in pies, or introducing
poison to her hopeless offspring in boiled eggs.

But all of her tempting relishes, or such of them, at least, as reached
Joe, were powerless to fill his hollow cheeks, growing thinner and paler
day by day. He could not eat with relish, he could not sleep with peace.
If it had not been for the new light that Alice Price had brought into
his life, he must have burned his young heart to ashes in his
restiveness.

Twice again the colonel and Alice had visited Joe, once to carry to him
the books for which he had expressed a desire, and again to bring the
_Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, which Alice herself had gone after to
Judge Maxwell's house. Each time Joe fancied that she left a radiance
behind her that brightened and warmed his cell for days.

Nobody else in the town troubled himself about the prisoner's welfare,
for nobody else knew him. Two of the ministers ha