onder through the swirling snow. Then he looked up into his mother's
face.

"Ma," he said grimly, "I ain't no thief!"

She smiled as bravely as she could with her stiffened face and with the
tears so near the surface. She told him that she knew it, and that
everybody knew it. But there was no answering smile on the boy's set
face.

The squire's gray mare, standing huddled up in the midst of other horses
and of buggies under the shed near the store, told that court had
probably already convened. Hands numb, the boy hitched the old mule to
the only rack left under the shed, then made Buck lie down under the
buggy. Heart pounding, he went up on the store porch with his mother and
pushed the door open.

There was a commotion when they entered. The men, standing about the
pot-bellied stove, their overcoats steaming, made way for them. Old Man
Thornycroft looked quickly and triumphantly around. In the rear of the
store the squire rose from a table, in front of which was a cleared
space.

"Pull up a chair nigh the stove for Mrs. Allen, Tom Belcher," he said.
"I'm busy tryin' this chicken-stealin' nigger. When I get through, Mrs.
Allen, if you're ready, I'll call your case."

Davy stood beside his mother while the trial of the Negro proceeded.
Some of the fight had left him now, crowded down here among all these
grown men, and especially in the presence of Mr. Kirby, for it is hard
for a boy to be bitter long. But with growing anxiety he heard the sharp
questions the magistrate asked the Negro; he saw the frown of justice;
he heard the sentence--"sixty days on the gang." And the Negro had
stolen only a chicken--and he had run off with another man's dog.

"The old man's rough this mornin'," Jim Taylor whispered to another man
above him; and he saw the furtive grin on the face of Old Man
Thornycroft, who leaned against the counter, waiting.

His heart jumped into his mouth when after a silence the magistrate
spoke: "Mr. Thornycroft, step forward, sir. Put your hand on the book
here. Now tell us about that dog of yours that was stole."

Looking first at the magistrate, then at the crowd as if to impress them
also, the old man told in a high-pitched, excited voice all the
details--his seeing Davy Allen pass in front of his house last Friday
afternoon, his missing the dog, his finding the block of wood down the
road beside the pasture fence, his overhearing the squire's talk right
here in the store, his calling on Mrs. Al