ided the lawyers from the lawed, lawing, and, in some cases,
outlawed. She was so unobtrusive in her rusty black dress, which looked
as if it were made of storm-streaked umbrellas, that nobody had noticed
her.

Now, when they saw her stand and shake hands with Hammer, and saw Hammer
obsequiously but conspicuously conduct her to a chair within the sacred
precincts of the bar, there were whisperings and straightenings of
backs, and a stirring of feet with that concrete action which belongs
peculiarly to a waiting, expectant crowd, but is impossible to segregate
or individually define.

Judge Maxwell opened the door of his chamber, which had stood tall and
dark and solemnly closed all morning just a little way behind the bench,
and took his place. At the same moment the sheriff, doubtless timing
himself to the smooth-working order, came in from the witness-room,
opening from the court-room at the judge's right hand, with the
prisoner.

Joe hesitated a little as the sheriff closed the door behind them, his
hand on the prisoner's shoulder, as if uncertain of what was next
required of him. The sheriff pushed him forward with commanding gesture
toward the table at which Hammer stood, and Joe proceeded to cross the
room in the fire of a thousand eyes.

It seemed to him that the sheriff might have made the entrance less
spectacular, that he could have brought him sooner, or another way. That
was like leading him across a stage, with the audience all in place,
waiting the event. But Joe strode along ahead of the sheriff with his
head up, his long, shaggy hair smoothed into some semblance of order,
his spare garments short and outgrown upon his bony frame. His arms were
ignominiously bound in the sheriff's handcuffs, linked together by half
a foot of dangling chain.

That stirring sigh of mingled whispers and deep-drawn breaths ran over
the room again; here and there someone half rose for a better look. The
dim-eyed old men leaned forward to see what was coming next; Uncle Posen
Spratt put up his steer's-horn trumpet as if to blow the blast of
judgment out of his ear.

Joe sat in the chair which Hammer indicated; the sheriff released one
hand from the manacles and locked the other to the arm of the chair.
Then Captain Taylor closed the door, himself on the outside of it, and
walked down to the front steps of the court-house with slow and stately
tread. There he lifted his right hand, as if to command the attention of
the w