There was a minute's wait. The clerk handed up to the judge a sheaf of papers in blue wrappers. The judge shuffled through them until he found the one he wanted. It was the middle of the afternoon of a luscious spring day--the last day of the spring term of court. In at the open windows came spicy, moist smells of things sprouting and growing, and down across the courthouse square the big star-shaped flowers of the dogwood trees showed white and misty, like a new Milky Way against a billowy green firmament. A minute only and then the sheriff reëntered. At his side came a man. This newcomer must have been dose to seventy years--or sixty-five, anyway. He was long and lean, and he bore his height with a sort of alert and supple erectness, stepping high, with the seemingly awkward gait of the man trained at crossing furrows, yet bringing his feet down noiselessly, like a house-cat treading on dead leaves. The way he moved made you think of a deerstalker. Strength, tremendous strength, was shown in the outward swing of the long arms and the huge, knotty hands, and there was temper in the hot, brown eyes and in the thick, stiff crop of reddish-gray hair, rising like buckwheat stubble upon his scalp. He had high cheekbones and a long, shaven face, and his skin was tanned to a leathery red, like a well-smoked ham. Except for the colors of his hair and eyes, he might have passed for half Indian. Indeed, there was a tale in the county that his great-grandmother was a Shawnee squaw. He was more than six feet tall--he must have been six feet two. With the sheriff alongside him he came to the bar--a sagged oaken railing--and stood there with his big hands cupped over it. He was newly shaved and dressed in what was evidently his best. “Pressley G. Harper at the bar,” sang out the clerk methodically. Everybody was listen-ing. “Pressley G. Harper,” said the judge, “waiving the benefit of counsel and the right of trial by jury, you have this day pleaded guilty to an indictment charging you with felonious assault in that you did, on the twenty-first day of January last, shoot and wound with a firearm one Virgil Settle, a citizen of this county. Have you anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be pronounced upon you?” Only eying him steadfastly, the confessed offender shook his head. “It is the judgment of this court, then, that you be confined in the state penitentiary for the period of two years at hard labor.” A babbling murmur ran over the room--for his sins old Press Harper was catching it at last. The prisoner's hands gripped the oaken rail until his knuckles nails showed white, and it seemed that the tough wood fibers would be dented in; other than that he gave no sign, but took the blow braced and steady, like a game man facing a firing squad. The sheriff inched toward him; but the judge raised the hand that held the blue-wrappered paper as a sign that he had more to say.