er grandly;
"vindication before the world!"

He spread his arms wide, as if the world stood before him, fat and big
of girth like himself, and he meant to embrace it with the next breath.

"You shall have it, Mr. Hammer," said the judge. He turned to the jury.
"Gentlemen of the jury, this case has come to a sudden and unexpected
end. The state's case, prosecuted with such worthy energy and honorable
intention, has collapsed. Your one duty now, gentlemen, is to return a
verdict of not guilty. Will it be necessary for you to retire to the
jury room?"

The jurymen had been exchanging glances. Now the foreman rose, tall and
solemn, with beard upon his breast.

"Your honor, it will not be necessary for the jury to retire," said he.
"We are ready to return our verdict."

According to the form, the foreman wrote out the verdict on the blank
provided by statute; he stood with his fellows while the clerk of the
court read it aloud:

"We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty."

The judge looked down at Joe, who had turned to his mother, smiling
through his tears.

"You are free, God bless you!" said he.

When a judge says so much more upon the bench than precedent, form, and
custom prescribe for him to say; when he puts down the hard mask of the
law and discovers his human face behind it, and his human heart moving
his warm, human blood; when a judge on the bench does that, what can be
expected of the unsanctified mob in front of him?

It was said by many that Captain Taylor led the applause himself, but
there were others who claimed that distinction for Colonel Price. No
matter.

While the house did not rise as one man--for in every house there are
old joints and young ones, which do not unlimber with the same degree of
alacrity, no matter what the incitement--it got to its feet in
surprising order, with a great tossing of arms and waving of hats and
coats. In the midst of this glad turmoil stood Uncle Posen Spratt, head
and shoulders above the crowd, mounted on a bench, his steer's horn
ear-trumpet to his whiskered lips, like an Israelitish priest, blowing
his famous fox-hound blast, which had been heard five miles on a still
autumn night.

Less than half an hour before, the public would have attended Joe
Newbolt's hanging with all the pleasurable and satisfactory thrills
which men draw from such melancholy events. Now it was clamoring to lift
him to its shoulders and bear him in triumph through the town.