Spring came earlier than common that year. The robins came back from the Gulf in February on the tail of a wet warm thaw. The fruit trees bloomed in March and by the beginning of April everything was a vivid green and all the trees were clumped with new leaves. Court opened on the first Monday. On the Sunday night before the first Monday, Judge Priest sat on his porch as the dusk came on, laving his spirits in the balm of the young spring night. In the grass below the steps the bull-cricket that wintered under Judge Priest's front steps was tuning his fairy-fiddle at regular, half-minute intervals. Bull bats on the quest for incautious gnats and midges were flickering overhead, showing white patches on the tinder sides of their long wings. A flying squirrel, the only night-rider of the whole squirrel tribe, flipped out of his hole in a honey locust tree, and cocked his head high, and then he spread the furry gray membranes along his sides and sailed in a graceful, downward swoop to the butt of a silver leaf poplar, fifty feet away, where he clung against the smooth bark so closely and so flatly he looked like a little pelt stretched and nailed up there to dry. The front gate clicked and creaked. The flying squirrel flipped around to the safe side of his tree and fled upward to the shelter of the branches, like a little gray shadow, and Judge Priest, looking down the aisle of shady trees, saw two women coming up the walk toward him, their feet crunching slowly on the gravel. He laid his pipe aside and pulled chairs forward for his callers, whoever they might be. They were right up to the steps before he made them out--Miss Puss Whitley and little Emmy Hardin. “Howdy do, ladies,” said the old Judge with his homely courtesy. “Howdy, Miss Puss? Emmy, child, how are you? Come in and set down and rest yourselves.” But for these two, this was no time for the small civilities. The weight of trouble at their hearts knocked for utterance at their lips. Or, at least, it was so with the old aunt. “Jedge Priest,” she began, with a desperate, driven eagerness, “we've come here tonight to speak in private with you about my boy--about Jimmy.” In the darkness they could not see that the old Judge's plump figure was stiffening. “Did Mister Dabney Prentiss--did anyone, send you here to see me on this business?” he asked, quickly. “No, suh, nobody a'tall,” answered the old woman. “We jest came on our own accord--we felt like as if we jest had to come and see you. Court opens in the momin' and Jimmy's case, as you know, comes up the first thing. And oh, Jedge Priest, we air in so much trouble, Emmy and me--and you've got the name of bein' kind hearted to them that's borne down and in distress--and so we come to you.” He raised his hand, as though to break in on her, but the old woman was not to be stopped. She was pouring out the grievous burden of her lament: