The people of Shaftesville regarded the swarm of visitors as somewhat an encroachment upon their vested rights. “Leave _anybody_ in the mountains?” was a frequent raillery. “Ye town folks jes’ ’lowed ye’d hev all the fun ter yerselves o’ seein’ Mink Lorey tried, ye grudgin’ half-livers,” the mountaineers would retort; “but from what I kin see, I reckon ye air sorter mistook this time, sure.” And indeed the court-room was crowded as it had seldom been in the fifty years that justice had been meted out here. In the space without the bar the benches groaned and creaked beneath the weight of those who had taken the precaution to secure seats in advance, and had occupied them in dreary waiting since early in the morning. The forethought of one coterie had come to naught, for the bench succumbed beneath twenty stalwart mountaineers; its feeble supports bent, and as the party collapsed in a wild mingling of legs and arms, waving in frantic efforts to recover equilibrium, Shaftesville was “mighty nigh tickled ter death,” for the first time that day. As the sprawling young fellows sheepishly gathered themselves together, a burst of jeering laughter filled the room, only gradually subdued by the sheriff’s “Silence in court!” The attorney-general was already piling his books and papers on the table, consulting his notes and absorbed in his preparations. He was a man of fifty, perhaps, with a polished bald head that might have been of interest to a phrenologist (for it had sundry marked protuberances), blunt, strong features, a heavy lower jaw, an expression of insistent common sense, and a deep bass voice. He was sonorously clearing his throat just now, and was wiping from his thick, short, grizzled mustache drops of some fluid that gave a pervasive unequivocal odor to his breath. It had only rejoiced his stomach, however, and did not affect the keen acumen for which he was famous, and he was settling to his work with an evident intention of giving the defense all they would be able to wrestle with. The old miller, in his rags and patches, sat beside him as prosecutor. His face wore a strange meekness. Now and then he lifted his bleared eyes with an intent look, as if hearing some unworded counsels; then shook his head and bowed it, with its long white locks, upon his hands clasped on his stick. There were many glances directed toward him, half in commiseration, half in curiosity; but these sentiments were bated somewhat by familiarity, for there was hardly a man in Cherokee County who had not visited the ruins of the mill and heard much gossip about the old man’s uncharacteristic humility and submissive grief.