“Now didn’t the attorney-general stuff you as full of lies as an egg of meat!” cried the young lawyer, divided between admiration of the attorney-general’s resources and contempt for their credulity. “Ye air the only folks in Cherokee County ez b’lieves sech,” said another by-stander. “Old man Griff an’ all his gran’chil’n lef town yestiddy evenin’ plumb sati’fied Tad’s alive, an’ goin’ ter hunt him up. An’ then I reckon the old man’ll furgit all about his repentance, an’ club an’ beat him same ez he always done.” “Waal,” demanded the ex-foreman, who was disposed to maintain the difficulty of the question, “how could a idjit keer fur hisself all this time?” “Tad never war sech a idjit; could run a mill, an’ plough, an’ pull fodder, an’ feed stock! I’ll be bound thar’s a mighty differ round old man Griff’s diggins now, sure. He ’peared a idjit mos’ly when he war beat over the head. Mos’ folks would look miser’ble then. He air lackin’, I know, but I reckon he kin work fur hisself ez well ez he done fur old man Griff. It’s a plumb shame ter jail Mink Lorey fur fower month more till he kin git another fool jury ter try him, an’ mebbe send him ter the Pen’tiary fur five year. I dunno what oughter be done ter sech a jury ez you-uns.” It was probably well for the public peace that events of general interest had taken place during the seclusion of the jury which the by-standers found a certain gloomy satisfaction in detailing; their attention was thus readily enough diverted from the disagreements of the jury-room to the circumstances of Peter Rood’s funeral,—who preached the sermon, and who were in attendance. They all sat, solemnly chewing, tilted back in their splint-bottomed chairs on the front gallery of the little hotel. The lights which came from the doors and windows of the building, slanting out in wide shafts, seemed to sever the gloom in equal sections. The figures of the men were dimly seen in the dusky intervals. The stars, in infinite hosts, were marshaled in the black sky, for the moon was late to-night. Only about the horizon were melancholy desert spaces. The summit line of the distant mountains was indistinguishable in the gloom. The landscape was all benighted. The presence of invisible trees close at hand was perceptible only to some fine sense of the differing degrees of density in the blackness. A horse trotted through the slant of light, falling into the road and showing the sleek roan of the steed and the impassive face under the drooping hatbrim of the rider,—then loomed an indeterminate centaur in the alternate glooms. The sounds of the town were shrill, then faint, with lapses of silence. One forlorn cricket was piping somewhere between the bricks of the pavement. “’Pears ter me,” said Bylor, “toler’ble cur’ous ez they wagoned deceased”—he had adopted the word from the reports of the sermon—“way up yander ter Eskaqua Cove, ter be buried in the graveyard thar.”