t ask the same question of you, and in the same offensive tone,"
said the judge.

"May I ask, not wishing to take a liberty, were you always the same old
pauper you've been since I've known you?" inquired Mahaffy. The judge
maintained a stony silence.

The heat deepened in the heart of the afternoon. The sun, a ball of
fire, slipped back of the tree-tops. Thick shadows stole across the
stretch of dusty road. Off in the distance there was the sound of
cowbell. Slowly these came nearer and nearer--as the golden light
slanted, sifting deeper and deeper into the woods.

They could see the crowd that came and went about the tavern, they
caught the distant echo of its mirth.

"Common--quite common," said the judge with somber melancholy.

"I didn't see anything common," said Mahaffy sourly. "The drinks weren't
common by a long sight."

"I referred to the gathering in its social aspect, Solomon," explained
the judge; "the illiberal spirit that prevailed, which, I observe, did
not escape you."

"Skunks!" said Mahaffy.

"Not a man present had the public spirit to set 'em up," lamented the
judge. "They drank in pairs, and I'd blistered my throat at their damn
jail-raising! What sort of a fizzle would it have been if I hadn't been
on hand to impart distinction to the occasion?"

"I don't begrudge 'em their liquor," said Mahaffy with acid dignity.

"I do," interrupted the judge. "I hope it's poison to 'em.

"It will be in the long run, if it's any comfort to you to know it."

"It's no comfort, it's not near quick enough," said the judge
relentlessly. The sudden noisy clamor of many voices, highpitched and
excited, floated out to them under the hot sky. "I wonder--" began the
judge, and paused as he saw the crowd stream into the road before the
tavern. Then a cloud of dust enveloped it, a cloud of dust that came
from the trampling of many pairs of feet, and that swept toward them,
thick and impenetrable, and no higher than a tall man's head in the
lifeless air. "I wonder if we missed anything," continued the judge,
finishing what he had started to say.

The score or more of men were quite near, and the judge and Mahaffy made
out the tall figure of the sheriff in the lead. And then the crowd, very
excited, very dusty, very noisy and very hot, flowed into the judge's
front yard. For a brief moment that gentleman fancied Pleasantville had
awakened to a fitting sense of its obligation to him and that it was
about to make