n where you can't see the mountains? Then the Sandorians
reply that from the slight elevation west of the town there is a view of
the Peak itself,--neither critic nor apologist taking into consideration
how rarely men and women ascend their little hills to contemplate the
wider glories of life.

To-day the court was sitting, and the town rejoiced. Every man, woman,
and child felt the pleasing exhilaration of knowing that something was
going forward. The square two-story false fronts of the peak-roofed
buildings looked with one-eyed approval upon the thronging men and
women, horses and dogs, enlivening the single street of the town. A
fervent sun shone gratefully upon the loungers in front of the
court-house, where the snow was trodden to the solid consistency of a
pavement. The noon recess was nearly over, and all were waiting for the
judge and his galaxy of legal lights.

Ed Rankin, a young ranchman from over beyond Emmaville, finding himself
among strangers, and being as shy as a coyote, turned in at the
court-house door, and was making his way toward the big air-tight stove,
when he observed that the room was not empty, as he supposed it would
be. In a remote corner sat a sorry-looking group, a woman and three
children, their shrinking figures thinly clad, their eyes, red with
crying or exposure, glancing apprehensively from side to side. The
youngest of the group was a boy of ten; he, like all the others, had the
look of a hunted creature.

Rankin walked across the room, his footsteps muffled by the sawdust with
which the floor was plentifully strewn. Yet, soft as his tread was, the
four shivering creatures were visibly startled by it. The young ranchman
passed within "the bar" and stood with his back to the stove. He tried
to whistle, but he could not do it. He looked about the room, seeking
some object to divert his thoughts. Bare walls and rows of empty benches
outside the bar; within that mystic boundary all the usual furnishings
of the immediate precincts of justice. Three days' steadfast
contemplation of these humble stage-properties had pretty well exhausted
their interest, and Rankin's attention again wandered to the group in
the corner. The more the dry scorching heat of the stove penetrated his
own person the colder the woman and children looked. At last he blurted
out, in the manner peculiar to him when suffering from embarrassment,
"Say, ma'am, why don't you come and get warm?"

The woman started and