m; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon
the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet
had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven
boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising
the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not have
equaled the results which the very profundity of his silence
achieved.

There was a momentous promise in his gravity, a hint of catastrophe in
the tilt of his head. Like two receding waves the tight ranks opened
before him, clearing a path for his heavy-footed advance to the
post-office doors--a lane of bulging eyes and clicking tongues such as
Old Jerry in all his days had never provoked. And the latter stood
there stock still in the middle of the entrance, too dazed at first to
grasp the whole meaning of the situation, until he, too, was swept
aside, without so much as a glance or a word, by one majestic sweep of
the Judge's hand.

Old Jerry's sparrowlike, thinly, wistful face flamed red, and then
faded a ghastly white, but no one seemed conscious at that moment of
the ignominy of it all. It was hours later that they recalled it and
realized that they had looked upon history in the making. No one
noticed the old man's faltering descent of the steps, or saw that he
paused in his slow way to the buggy to turn back and stand looking
about him in a kind of bewildered desperation. For the gaze of all had
swung from the Judge's broad, disappearing back to the face of the boy
who was sitting in the buckboard, totally unconscious of that battery
of eyes, smiling to himself.

He even chuckled aloud once--Young Denny did--a muffled, reasonless
sort of a chuckle, as if he did not even know they were there. It was
almost as though he were playing straight into the Judge's own plan,
for the effect of the mirth upon the group on the walk was electrical.
It sent a shiver of anticipation through it from end to end. And then,
like the eyes of one man, their eyes swung back again from the ragged
bruise across the boy's chin to meet the Judge as he reappeared.

Yet not one of them so much as dared to whisper the question that
was quivering upon the lips of all and burning hungrily in their
faded eyes. Once more the wide lane opened magically for him--but
again Judge Maynard's measured progress was momentarily barred.
Curiosity may have prompted it, and then again it may have been that
he was betrayed by the