alustrade was hacked by the knives of
generations of loiterers. There was no window in the wall giving upon
it; darkness hung over its first landing on the brightest day. The just
and the unjust alike were shrouded in its gloomy penumbra as they
passed. It was the solemn warder at the gate, which seemed to cast a
taint over all who came, and fasten a cloud upon them which they must
stand in the white light of justice to purge away.

When the civil war began, the flag of the Union was taken down from the
cupola of the court-house. In all the years that had passed since its
close, the flag never had been hoisted to its place of honor again. That
event was not to take place, indeed, until twenty years or more after
the death of Isom Chase, when the third court-house was built, and the
old generation had passed away mainly, and those who remained of it had
forgotten. But that incident is an incursion into matters which do not
concern this tale.

Monday morning came on dull and cloudy. Shelbyville itself was scarcely
astir, its breakfast fires no more than kindled, when the wagons of
farmers and the straggling troops of horsemen from far-lying districts
began to come in and seek hitching-room around the court-house square.
It looked very early in the day as if there was going to be an unusual
crowd for the unusual event of a trial for murder.

Isom Chase had been widely known. His unsavory reputation had spread
wider than the sound of the best deeds of the worthiest man in the
county. It was not so much on account of the notoriety of the old man,
which had not died with him, as the mystery in the manner of his death,
that people were anxious to attend the trial.

It was not known whether Joe Newbolt was to take the witness-stand in
his own behalf. It rested with him and his lawyer to settle that; under
the law he could not be forced to testify. The transcript of his
testimony at the inquest was ready at the prosecutor's hand. Joe would
be confronted with that, and, if there was a spark of spunk in him,
people said, he would rise up and stand by it. And then, once Sam Lucas
got him in the witness-chair, it would be all day with his evasions and
concealments.

Both sides had made elaborate preparations for the trial. The state had
summoned forty witnesses; Hammer's list was half as long. It was a
question in the public speculation what either side expected to prove or
disprove with this train of people. Certainly, Hammer