and though
it was twilight, the men were still hammering busily.

"What are they doing?" asked Landolin; and before an answer could be
given, he continued: "I remember, when I was a child, that a scaffold
was built there, and a man beheaded on it. Beheading is not the worst
thing in the world."

"Oh! husband!" replied his wife. "What strange thoughts! Peter, don't
you know what they are doing?"

"Certainly; certainly. Next Sunday the soldiers have their
celebration."

As the wagon drove past the garden of the Sword inn, a number of ladies
and gentlemen were looking down from the veranda. Landolin raised his
hat and bowed, but no one returned the salutation; and, for the first
time in his life, he tasted the bitter experience of stretching out his
hand in greeting, and of finding no hand ready to take it.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

No one had returned Landolin's greeting from the veranda of the inn. To
be sure the judge's wife, who sat near the railing, looked an
acknowledgment, but that could not be seen at the distance. More she
dared not do, for they were having a full meeting of the members of the
"Casino," a society or association of the people of rank in the city,
which met the first Wednesday after each full moon. Several members
from a distance were there; the Catholic priest; and the only
Protestant pastor of the district, with his wife.

The conversation naturally turned upon the monstrous verdict of the
previous day. The corporation-attorney said that he was glad he had
declined to defend the case. He could well imagine the surprise of
Landolin's counsel when his client was acquitted. Of course, in such
cases, a lawyer feels bound to make use of all possible dialectic arts
and strategies, but still, when successful, he must feel the recoil of
the gun.

The school-teacher, whom but few knew to be the editor of the weekly
paper, _The Forest Messenger_, complained in a disheartened tone that
this verdict of the overbearing farmers would necessarily intensify the
hate existing between the different classes; for the poor man felt that
he had no rights. It was high time that the choice of jurymen should no
longer depend upon the length of a man's tax-list.

The attorney coincided with him, but went even farther, and asserted
that it was an old prejudice of liberalism, that the ordinary mind
could render a just verdict.

The judge nodded to him, and he continued, somewhat v