him loose--be tickled to do it."

"But they will take him to jail, won't they?"

"Mebby, if they don't take him up home. By this time they've found out
all about him. We'll drive across the country, get on a railroad train
and be there in a jiffy."

CHAPTER XXIV.

TWO FRUITFUL WITNESSES.

Upon the case of the illicit distiller Judge Elliott had ever sat with
utmost severity. As a colonel of cavalry he had distinguished himself.
His left sleeve was empty. Lukewarm friends said that he was harsh and
unforgiving. His intimates pointed to the fact that children were fond
of him.

One morning he came into the chambers adjoining the court-room and for a
long time sat musing at his desk. Capt. Johnson, U. S. Marshal, and
Foster, deputy, came in shortly afterward, the captain taking a seat at
his desk and Foster standing like a sentinel at the closed door. The
captain, after examining a number of papers, glancing round from time to
time as if to note whether or not the Judge had come out of his
abstraction, remarked to Foster:

"How's your barometer? Or should I call it thermometer?"

"Both, I guess," Foster replied. "I have two."

He meant old wounds, foretellers of weather whims.

"Are we going to have rain, Foster?"

"Don't know--I feel fair weather."

"My instrument may be a little acuter than yours. Mine says rain."

The Judge looked up. "Rain by all means," said he; and then after a time
the Captain remarked:

"Doesn't appear that you are going to have much of a vacation, Judge."

"That's a fact, and to one I had been looking forward. I am tired of
this everlasting hum-drum, listening to false statements and prying into
the criminal weaknesses of other men. The Lord knows that we have
weaknesses enough of our own. But I don't see any immediate relief. The
criminal docket precludes any adjournment. And I have a civil case under
advisement. My son Tom is married. And so is my sister."

"What!" exclaimed the Marshal. "When did all this occur?"

From his pocket the Judge took a letter. "Tom and my sister went up into
the mountains and--this letter tells all I know about it, and it is
little enough:

'Dear Father: I have married a mountain girl and
auntie has married her cousin, a preacher, but a
good fellow all the same. I called it a double
stroke of lightning, but auntie said it was
perfume stealing down from the wild vines. For me