sed none ter hear 'bout Tobe
Gryce's goin's-on hyar las' night. I hev looked fur more'n that."

"Wa'al, I'll tell ye," replied the register. "Nuthin' but favoritism
in the county court. Ranger air 'lected by the jestices. Ye know," he
added, vainglorious of his own tenure of office by the acclaiming voice
of the sovereign people, "ranger ain't 'lected, like the register, by
pop'lar vote."

A slow smoke still wreathed upward from the charred ruins of the
court-house. Gossiping groups stood here and there, mostly the
jeans-clad mountaineers, but there were a few who wore "store clothes,"
being lawyers from more sophisticated regions of the circuit. Court
had been in session the previous day. The jury, serving in a criminal
case--still strictly segregated, and in charge of an officer--were
walking about wearily in double file, waiting with what patience they
might their formal discharge.

The sheriffs dog, a great yellow cur, trotted in the rear. When the
officer was first elected, this animal, observing the change in his
master's habits, deduced his own conclusions. He seemed to think the
court-house belonged to the sheriff, and thenceforward guarded the door
with snaps and growls; being a formidable brute, his idiosyncrasies
invested the getting into and getting out of law with abnormal
difficulties. Now, as he followed the disconsolate jury, he bore the
vigilant mien with which he formerly drove up the cows, and if a juror
loitered or stepped aside from the path, the dog made a slow detour as
if to round him in, and the melancholy cortege wandered on as before.
More than one looked wistfully at the group on the crag, for it was
distinguished by that sprightly interest which scandal excites so
readily.

"Ter my way of thinking" drawled Sam Peters, swinging his feet over the
giddy depths of the valley, "Tobe ain't sech ez oughter be set over the
county ez a ranger, noways. 'Pears not ter me, an' I hev been keepin' my
eye on him mighty sharp."

A shadow fell among the group, and a man sat down on a bowlder hard by.
He, too, had just arrived, being lured to the town by the news of the
fire. His slide had been left at the verge of the clearing, and one of
the oxen had already lain down; the other, although hampered by the yoke
thus diagonally displaced, stood meditatively gazing at the distant blue
mountains. Their master nodded a slow, grave salutation to the group,
produced a plug of tobacco, gnawed a fragment from i