the old lawyer.

"Yep." The sheriff thrust the paper into a drawer. "I'll fetch him
right down."

"Remember, don't give him a hint!" Old Hosie warned again. "You're
sure," he added anxiously, "he hasn't got on to anything?"

"How many more times have I got to tell you," returned the sheriff, a
little irritated, "that I ain't said a word to him--just as you told
me! He heard some of the racket last night, sure. But he thought it
was just part of the regular campaign row."

"All right! All right! Hurry him along then!"

Left alone, Old Hosie walked excitedly up and down the dingy room,
whose sole pretension in an aesthetic way was the breeze-blown
"yachting girl" of a soap company's calendar, sailing her bounding
craft above the office cuspidor.

The old man grinned widely, rubbed his bony hands together, and a
concatenation of low chuckles issued from his lean throat. But when
Sheriff Nichols reappeared, ushering in Arnold Bruce, all these
outward manifestations of satisfaction abruptly terminated, and his
manner became his usual dry and sarcastic one with his nephew.

"Hello, Arn!" he said. "H'are you?"

"Hello!" Bruce returned, rather gruffly, shaking the hand his uncle
held out. "What's this the sheriff has just told me about a new
trial?"

"It's all right," returned Old Hosie. "We've fought on till we've made
'em give it to us."

"What's the use of it?" Bruce growled. "The cards will be stacked the
same as at the other trial."

"Well, whatever happens, you're free till then. I've got you out on
bail, and I'm here to take you home with me. So come along with you."

Old Hosie pushed him out and down the jail steps and into a closed
carriage that was waiting at the curb. Bruce was in a glowering,
embittered mood, as was but natural in a man who keenly feels that he
has suffered without justice and has lost all for which he fought.

"You know I appreciate your working for the new trial," he remarked
dully, as the carriage rattled slowly on. "How did you manage it?"

"It's too long a story for now. I'll tell you when we get home."

Bruce was gloomily silent for a moment.

"Of course the Blake crowd swept everything at the election to-day?"

"Well, on the whole, their majority wasn't as big as they'd counted
on," returned Old Hosie.

They rode on, Bruce sunk in his bitter, rebellious dejection. The
carriage turned into the street that ran behind the Court House, then
after rattling over the brick pa