Judge Maxwell smiled, and adjourned court, which order nobody but his
clerk heard, and let them have their noisy way. When the people saw him
come down from the bench they quieted, not understanding his purpose;
and when he reached out his hand to Joe, who rose to meet him, silence
settled over the house. Judge Maxwell put his arm around Joe's shoulder
in fatherly way while he shook hands with Mrs. Newbolt. What he said,
nobody but those within the bar heard, but he gave Joe's back an
expressive slap of approval as he turned to the prosecuting attorney.

People rushed forward with the suddenness of water released, to shake
hands with Joe when they understood that the court was in adjournment.
They crowded inside the rail, almost overwhelming him, exclaiming in
loud terms of admiration, addressing him familiarly, to his excessive
embarrassment, pressing upon him their assurances that they knew, all
the time, that he didn't do it, and that he would come out of it with
head and tail both up, as he had come through.

Men who would have passed him yesterday without a second thought, and
who would no more have given their hands to him on the footing of
equality--unless they had chanced to be running for office--than they
would have thrust them into the fire, now stood there smiling and
jostling and waiting their turns to reach him, all of them chattering
and mouthing and nodding heads until one would have thought that each of
them was a prophet, and had predicted this very thing.

The old generals, colonels, majors, and captains--that was the lowest
rank in Shelbyville--and the noncommissioned substantial first citizens
of the county, were shaking hands among themselves, and nodding and
smiling, full of the fine feeling of that moment. It was a triumph of
chivalry, they said; they had witnessed the renaissance of the old
spirit, the passing of which, and the dying out and dwindling of it in
the rising generation, they had so long and lamentably deplored.

There, before their eyes, they had seen this uncouth grub transformed
into a glorious and noble thing, and the only discord in the miraculous
harmony of it was the deep-lying regret that it was not a son of
Shelbyville who had thus proved himself a man. And then the colonels and
others broke off their self-felicitation to join the forward mob in the
front of the room, and press their congratulations upon Joe.

Joe, embarrassed and awkward, tried to be genial, but hardly s