away," explained Lige. "He thought he'd be back before
the parade was over, and said you were enjoying it so much he didn't
want to speak to you."

"Called away?" she said, inquiringly.

Minnie laughed. "Oh, everybody sends for Mr. Harkless."

"It was a farmer, name of Bowlder," added Mr. Willetts. "His son
Hartley's drinking again, and there ain't any one but Harkless can do
anything with him. You let him tackle a sick man to nurse, or a tipsy
one to handle, and I tell you," Mr. Willetts went on with enthusiasm,
"he is at home. It beats me,--and lots of people don't think college
does a man any good! Why, the way he cured old Fis----"

"See!" cried Minnie, loudly, pointing out of the window. "Look down
there. Something's happened."

There was a swirl in the crowd below. Men were running around a corner
of the court-house, and the women and children were harking after. They
went so fast, and there were so many of them, that immediately that
whole portion of the yard became a pushing, tugging, pulling, squirming
jam of people.

"It's on the other side," said Lige. "We can see from the hall window.
Come quick, before these other folks fill it up."

They followed him across the building, and looked down on an agitated
swarm of faces. Five men were standing on the entrance steps to the
door below, and the crowd was thickly massed beyond, leaving a little
semicircle clear about the steps. Those behind struggled to get closer,
and leaped in the air to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Harkless
stood alone on the top step, his hand resting on the shoulder of the
pale and contrite and sobered Hartley. In the clear space, Jim Bardlock
was standing with sheepishly hanging head, and between him and Harkless
were the two gamblers of the walnut shells. The journalist held in his
hand the implements of their profession.

"Give it all up," he was saying in his steady voice. "You've taken
eighty-six dollars from this boy. Hand it over."

The men began to edge closer to the crowd, giving little, swift,
desperate, searching looks from left to right, and right to left, moving
nervously about, like weasels in a trap. "Close up there tight," said
Harkless, sharply. "Don't let them out."

"W'y can't we git no square treatment here?" one of the gamblers whined;
but his eyes, blazing with rage, belied the plaintive passivity of his
tone. "We been running no skin. Wy d'ye say we gotter give up our own
money? You gotter prove it