e turned towards me. He'd folded his arms high and
tight, and his face in the moonlight was--well, it was very different
from his careless tone of voice. He was like--like an actor acting
tragedy and talking comedy. Mitchell went on, speaking quickly--his
voice seeming to harden:

. . . . .

"The charge was read out--I forget how it went--it sounded like a long
hymn being given out. Jack pleaded guilty. Then he straightened up for
the first time and looked round the court, with a calm, disinterested
look--as if we were all strangers and he was noting the size of the
meeting. And--it's a funny world, ain't it?--everyone of us shifted
or dropped his eyes, just as if we were the felons and Jack the judge.
Everyone except the Doctor; he looked at Jack and Jack looked at him.
Then the Doctor smiled--I can't describe it--and Drew smiled back. It
struck me afterwards that I should have been in that smile. Then the
Doctor did what looked like a strange thing--stood like a soldier with
his hands to Attention. I'd noticed that, whenever he'd made up his mind
to do a thing, he dropped his hands to his sides: it was a sign that he
couldn't be moved. Now he slowly lifted his hand to his forehead, palm
out, saluted the prisoner, turned on his heel, and marched from the
court-room. 'He's boozin' again,' someone whispered. 'He's got a touch
of 'em.' 'My oath, he's ratty!' said someone else. One of the traps
said:

"'Arder in the car-rt!'

"The judge gave it to Drew red-hot on account of the burglary being the
cause of the girl's death and the sorrow in a respectable family; then
he gave him five years' hard.

"It gave me a lot of confidence in myself to see the law of the land
barking up the wrong tree, while only I and the Doctor and the prisoner
knew it. But I've found out since then that the law is often the only
one that knows it's barking up the wrong tree."

. . . . .

Mitchell prepared to turn in.

"And what about Drew," I asked.

"Oh, he did his time, or most of it. The Doctor went to headquarters,
but either a drunken doctor from a geebung town wasn't of much account,
or they weren't taking any romance just then at headquarters. So the
Doctor came back, drank heavily, and one frosty morning they found him
on his back on the bank of the creek, with his face like note-paper
where the blood hadn't dried on it, and an old pistol in his hand--that
he'd used, they said, to shoot Cossacks from hors