How Gwinnan could infuse into his impassive mien and his soft, expressionless drawl so caustic a suggestion of displeasure is one of those mysteries of manner addressed to a subtle and receptive sense which can take account of so fine and elusive a medium of communication. The jury, in receiving their discharge, felt like culprits until they were once more at large and in the outer air, when they swore at the judge with the heartiest unanimity,—on this point they could agree,—and promised themselves, taking note of his character as politician, that if ever they were vouchsafed the opportunity they would retaliate. Then among the loungers about the tavern they fell to asking the news with the hungry interest of travelers who have been long absent. They experienced a certain surprise to find that their accountability as jurors had not ceased with their discharge. There was a manifest inclination on the part of public opinion, as embodied in the idlers about the hotel, to hold them individually responsible for the mischances of the trial. Perhaps the impression that they had been long absent was strengthened by the revolution which popular prejudice had accomplished in the interval. Its flexibility could hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that the prankish Mink had suddenly risen in its estimation to the dignity of a public martyr. “He’s a tremenjious wild scamp, the Lord knows,” said one, “but folks ain’t jailed fur bein’ gamesome, an’ by rights ye oughter hev turned Mink out’n that jail this evenin’.” “Yessir,” assented another. “Mink oughter be mighty nigh Hazel Valley by now, ef he had been gin a fair trial.” That conclusive formula, “This is a free country, by the Lord!” was often insistently reiterated in the discussion, for the bewildered jury discovered that the persuasion of the prisoner’s innocence had never wavered after Alethea Sayles had sworn that she had seen Tad Simpkins since the disaster. The community at large had not been subjected to the morbid influences of seclusion, and mental stress, and the nervous shock which the jury had sustained upon the death of Peter Rood, and the necessity of persistent consideration of spiritual and spectral phenomena forced upon them by the attorney-general. “You see, gentlemen,” said a young sprig of a lawyer, glad to air his information, “you went off on the wrong road. ’Twarn’t the business o’ the defense to account for Tad. ’Twas the prosecution’s business to prove that he was dead and that Mink killed him. And they didn’t do it; they just proved he was missing, for that girl swore she saw him afterward. They’ve got to prove the _corpus delicti_, gentlemen, in a case like this.” The jurymen were laughed to scorn when they suggested their doubts of the genuineness of Tad’s appearance.