others wondered over that
point also. It was the public expectation that she naturally would
assist the state in the punishment of her husband's slayer; but Sam
Lucas was not paying the slightest attention to her, and it was not
known whether he even had summoned her as a witness.

And now Captain Taylor began to create a fresh commotion by clearing the
spectators from the first row of benches to make seats for the jury
panel. Judge Maxwell was waiting the restoration of order, leaning back
in his chair. Joe scanned his face.

Judge Maxwell was tall and large of frame, from which the study and
abstemiousness of his life had worn all superfluous flesh. His face,
cleanly shaved, was expressive of the scholarly attainments which made
his decisions a national standard. The judge's eyes were bushed over
with great, gray brows, the one forbidding cast in his countenance; they
looked out upon those who came for judgment before him through a pair of
spring-clamp spectacles which seemed to ride precariously upon his
large, bony nose. The glasses were tied to a slender black braid, which
he wore looped about his neck.

His hair was long, iron-gray, and thick; he wore it brushed straight
back from his brow, without a parting or a break. It lay in place so
smoothly and persistently through all the labor of his long days, that
strangers were sometimes misled into the belief that it was not his own.
This peculiar fashion of dressing his hair, taken with the length and
leanness of his jaw, gave the judge a cast of aquiline severeness which
his gray eyes belied when they beamed over the tops of his glasses at
floundering young counsel or timid witness.

Yet they could shoot darts of fire, as many a rash lawyer who had fallen
under their censure could bear witness. At such moments the judge had a
peculiar habit of drawing up his long back and seemingly to distend
himself with all the dignity which his cumulative years and honors had
endured, and of bowing his neck to make the focus of his eyes more
direct as he peered above his rimless glasses. He did not find it
necessary to reprimand an attorney often, never more than once, but
these occasions never were forgotten. In his twenty-five years' service
on the bench, he never had been reversed.

Joe felt a revival of hope again under the influence of these
preparations for the trial. Perhaps Alice was there, somewhere among the
people back in the room, he thought. And the colonel, als