or being tight!

Then the Sheriff on one side and his deputy on the other, led the
culprit out, now sufficiently quiet and half whimpering. A considerable
portion of the crowd followed him.

Outside, the prisoner was sober enough, and he begged hard to be let
off and allowed to go home. His friends, too, joined in his petition and
promised to guarantee that he would not come back again during the term
of court. But the Sheriff was firm.

"No. The Judge told me to put you in jail and I 'm goin' to do it." He
took two huge iron keys from his deputy and rattled them fiercely.

Turkle shrank back with horror.

"You ain't goin' to put me in thar, Aleck! Not in that hole! Not just
for a little drop o' whiskey. It was _your_ whiskey, too, Aleck. I was
drinkin' yo' health, Aleck. You know I was."

"The Judge won't know anything about it. He 'll never think of it
again," pleaded several of Turkle's friends. "You know he has ordered a
drunken man put there before and never said any more about it--just told
you to discharge him next day."

Turkle stiffened up with hope.

"Yes, Aleck." He leaned on the Sheriff's arm heavily. "He 's drunk
himself--I don't mean that, I mean _you 're_ drunk--oh, no--I mean _I'm_
drunk. Everybody 's drunk."

"Yes, you 've gone and called me a drunkard before the Court. Now I 'm
goin' to show you." Thompson rattled his big keys again savagely.

Turkle caught him with both hands.

"Oh, Aleck, don't talk that a-way," he pleaded in a tremulous voice.
"Don't talk that a-way!" He burst into tears and flung his arms around
the Sheriff's neck. He protested that he had never, seen him take a
drink in his life; he would go and tell the Judge so; if necessary, he
would swear to it on a Bible.

"Aleck, you know I love you better than anybody in this world--except my
wife and children. Yes, better than them--better than Jinny. Jinny will
tell you that herself. Oh! Aleck!" He clung to him and sobbed!

His friends indorsed this and declared that they would bring him back if
the Judge demanded his presence. They would "promise to bring him back
dead or alive at any time he sent for him."

As Turkle and his friends were always warm supporters of the Sheriff, a
fact of which they did not fail to remind him, Thompson was not averse
to letting him off, especially as he felt tolerably sure that the Judge
would, as they said, forget all about the matter, or, if he remembered
it, would, as he had done before