arking of a dog in greeting, and the
bray of a hungry mule, and he found himself close upon a cabin, and by
a freak of fortune it proved to be his own, and he was at home.

Vaguely enough, yet insistently, the experience kept recurring to him
during the days in Asheville, when he was awaiting his trial.

He went into the court-room in the Federal Building and watched, with a
languid curiosity born of its foreignness, the easy-going ceremony of
the opening of court. A group of lawyers laughed and gossiped at the
front. A larger number of men, who proved to be potential jurors,
gathered on one side and talked together more quietly, impressed by the
novelty of their experience; while the men who had served on the jury
before explained the furnishing of the room to them.

Some ladies were ushered into seats near the bench by a dapper young
lawyer. Behind a railing, all about von Rittenheim, in front of him,
beside him, and back of him, were the lean forms and bent shoulders of
the mountaineers who were witnesses or principals in the whisky cases
that fill so fully the docket of this court. From their appearance it
was impossible to tell which were the law-breakers and which the
bearers of testimony against them. There were old men and boys.
Children were clinging to the skirts of their mothers, who had come to
town either as witnesses or for the holiday. One woman was quieting a
crying baby with the gag that a baby never refuses. She herself was
soothed by the snuff-stick that protruded from the space left vacant by
the early decay of her two front teeth.

The air rapidly grew heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies and of
moist tobacco, and with the peculiar oily odor of corn whisky.

A short man of important bearing stepped in front of the rail and
scanned the mass behind it. He easily singled out von Rittenheim, whose
cropped head shone fair from among the towsled pows around him.

"Oh, von Rittenheim," he called, "step out here a minute."

"My so good friend, Mr. Weaver?" acknowledged Friedrich, looking at him
through the squinting eyes that a sharp headache gave him.

"You'll be held by the grand jury, of course, von Rittenheim, but you
needn't stay here all the time. Just drop in once or twice a day and
see how the list stands. Some of these are old cases crowded out of the
last term, and we may not get to you until Wednesday or Thursday. It
ain't a right enjoyable place to stay in, and you'd better go out in