his branching mustaches, which he had
trimmed up and soaped back quite handsomely.

To his own credit and the surprise of the lawyers who were watching the
case, Hammer made a great deal of the point of Joe having gone to Frost,
voluntarily and alone, to summon him to the scene of the tragedy. Frost
admitted that he had believed Joe's story until Sol Greening had pointed
out to him the suspicious circumstances.

"So you have to have somebody else to do your thinkin' for you, do you?"
said Hammer. "Well, you're a fine officer of the law and a credit to
this state!"

"I object!" said the prosecuting attorney, standing up in his place,
very red around the eyes.

The judge smiled, and the court-room tittered. The sheriff looked back
over his shoulder and rapped the table for order.

"Comment is unnecessary, Mr. Hammer," said the judge. "Proceed with the
case."

And so that weary day passed in trivial questioning on both sides,
trivial bickerings, and waste of time, to the great edifications of
everybody but Joe and his mother, and probably the judge. Ten of the
state's forty witnesses were disposed of, and Hammer was as moist as a
jug of cold water in a shock of wheat.

When the sheriff started to take Joe back to jail, the lad stood for a
moment searching the breaking-up and moving assembly with longing eyes.
All day he had sat with his back to the people, not having the heart to
look around with that shameful handcuff and chain binding his arm to the
chair. If Alice had been there, or Colonel Price, neither had come
forward to wish him well.

There were Ollie and her mother, standing as they had risen from their
bench, waiting for the crowd ahead of them to set in motion toward the
door, and here and there a face from his own neighborhood. But Alice was
not among them. She had withdrawn her friendship from him in his darkest
hour.

Neither had Morgan appeared to put his shoulder under the hard-pressing
load and relieve him of its weight. Day by day it was growing heavier;
but a little while remained until it must crush out his hope forever.
Certainly, there was a way out without Morgan; there was a way open to
him leading back into the freedom of the world, where he might walk
again with the sunlight on his face. A word would make it clear.

But the sun would never strike again into his heart if he should go back
to it under that coward's reprieve, and Alice--Alice would scorn his
memory.

CHAPTER XV