r. Eldridge had drawn loomed up
before him. But with a hasty hand he wrote in "not," dropped in the
ballot, and going back to his chair by the window, sat down.

There was a cold wave of silence.

Then Eli suddenly walked up to the foreman and faced him.

"Now," he said, "we'll stop. The very next turn breaks ground. If you,
or any other man that you set on, tries to talk to me when I don't
want to hear, to worry me to death--look out!"

How the long hours wore on! How easy, sometimes, to resist an open
pressure, and how hard, with the resistance gone, to fight, as one
that beats the air! How the prospect of a whole hostile town loomed
up, in a mirage, before Eli! And then the picture rose before him of a
long, stately bark, now building, whose owner had asked him yesterday
to be first mate. And if his wife were only well, and he were only
free from this night's trouble, how soon, upon the long, green waves,
he could begin to redeem his little home!

And then came Mr. Eldridge, kind and friendly, to have another little
chat.

* * * * *

Morning came, cold and drizzly. An officer knocked at the door, and
called out, "Breakfast." And, in a moment, unwashed, and all uncombed,
except the tin-peddler, who always carried a beard-comb in his pocket,
they were marched across the street to the hotel.

There were a number of men on the piazza waiting to see them--jurymen,
witnesses, and the accused himself, for he was on bail. He had seen
the procession the night before, and, like the others, had read its
meaning.

"Eli knows I wouldn't do it," he had said to himself, "and he's going
to hang out, sure."

The jury began to turn from the court-house door. Everybody looked. A
file of two men, another file, another, another; would there come
three men, and then one? No; Eli no longer walked alone.

Everybody looked at Wood; he turned sharply away.

But this time the order of march in fact showed nothing, one way or
the other. It only meant that the judge, who had happened to see the
jury the night before returning from their supper, had sent for the
high sheriff in some temper--for judges are human--and had vigorously
intimated that if that statesman did not look after his fool of a
deputy, who let a jury parade secrets to the public view, he
would----!

* * * * *

The jury were in their room again. At nine o'clock came a rap, and a
summons from the cour