“I know it air a true word!” cried the old miller, clasping his hands. “God would not deliver my soul ter hell. I fund him in my youth, but my age air the age o’ the backslider. He would not desert me, though! An’ I hev been gin ter do my good works o’ faith anew. I’ll find my boy. I’ll make amends. I’ll”—— The sheriff’s insistence, “Silence in court!” had no coercion for him. He began to sob and cry aloud, and to call the idiot’s name, and was finally taken by the deputy and led out of the court-room, the officer promising to come and let him know as soon as Alethea had disclosed the boy’s whereabouts. Mink glanced around him in triumph. His lip curved. A brilliant elation shone in his eyes. He tossed back, with an arrogant gesture, his long, red, curling hair, gilded by the lamplight to a brighter hue. He joyed to see the discomfiture of his detractors, who had given their testimony with all the gusto that appertains to stamping on a man, literally and metaphorically, who is already down. He noted, too, the surprise and pleasure in Ben Doaks’s eye, in Jerry Price’s freckled, ugly face, and, strangely enough, Peter Rood looked transfigured. His surly scowl was gone, as if it had never existed. His swarthy face was irradiated by his great excited eyes. A flush dyed his cheek. His breath came in quick gasps. He seemed inordinately relieved, delighted. What! because the forlorn little idiot was not dead? Mink could not understand it. With not even a surmise to explain the demonstration, he stared in suddenly renewed gravity at his old enemy on the jury. As soon as order was restored, Harshaw resumed his questions. “Tell the jury when and where you saw him, and how you are sure it was after he was reputed to be drowned.” “’Kase ’twar on the Monday o’ the camp-meetin’ in Eskaqua Cove, an’ that warn’t begun till arter the mill war busted down,” said Alethea. She detailed the scene at the little school-house in her uncouth phrasings, every syllable carrying conviction to her hearers. Her bonnet had fallen quite back on her shoulders. Her face was delicately ethereal in the lamplight,—so much of the sincerities of her nature it expressed, so fine and true an intelligence, that, beautiful as it was, it was still more spiritual. The strange story she had told was improbable. Looking upon her face it was impossible to doubt it. “That night, what did you do?”