s shabby, but, after all, I'm fond o' the
old thing. I love good clothes, but I can't afford them now."

Then he bade her good night and came away.

XXX

Evidence

It was court week, and the grand jury was in session. There were
many people in the streets of the shire town. They moved with a
slow foot, some giving their animation to squints of curiosity and
shouts of recognition, some to profanity and plug tobacco. Squire
Day and Colonel Judson were to argue the famous maple-sugar case,
and many causes of local celebrity were on the calendar.

There were men with the watchful eye of the hunter, ever looking
for surprises. They moved with caution, for here, indeed, were
sights and perils greater than those of the timber land. Here
were houses, merchants, lawyers, horse-jockeys, whiskey, women.
They knew the thickets and all the wild creatures that lived in
them, but these things of the village were new and strange. They
came out of the stores and, after expectorating, stood a moment
with their hands in their pockets, took a long look to the right
and a long look to the left and threw a glance into the sky, and
then examined the immediate foreground. If satisfied, they began
to move slowly one way or the other and, meeting hunters presently,
would ask:--

"Here fer yer bounties?"

"Here fer my bounties," another would say. Then they both took a
long look around them.

"Wish't I was back t' the shanty."

"So do I."

"Scares me."

"Too many houses an' too many women folks."

"An' if ye wan' t' git a meal o' vittles, it costs ye three
mushrats."

Night and morning the tavern offices were full of smart-looking
men,--lawyers from every village in the county, who, having dropped
the bitter scorn of the court room, now sat gossiping in a cloud of
tobacco smoke, rent with thunder-peals of laughter and lightning
flashes of wit. Teams of farmer folk filled the sheds and were
tied to hitching-posts, up and down the main thoroughfare of the
village. Every day rough-clad, brawny men led their little sons to
the courthouse.

"Do ye see that man with the spectacles and the bald head?" they
had been wont to whisper, when seated in the court room, "that air
man twistin' his hair,--that's Silas Wright; an' that tall man that
jes' sot down?--that's John L. Russell. Now I want ye t' listen,
careful. Mebbe ye'll be a lawyer, sometime, yerself, as big as any
of 'em."

The third day of that week--it w