“I reckon everybody don’t feel like we-uns do,” said Jerry Price, who, although he smarted under the unmerited disgrace he had experienced at the hands of Gwinnan, had submitted to it as a judicial necessity. Its rankling pangs were manifested only when, chancing to meet the foreman, Jerry would ask, in a manner charged with interest and an affectation of mystery, whether he had had his tongue measured yet, and how many joints it had been ascertained to have. “They’re a little more disgruntled over in Kildeer than you are here,” Harshaw declared. “You’d allow the court-room was a distric’ school, if you could know the way he domineers over there. I always look to see the learned counsel put his finger in his mouth and whine when Gwinnan gets on the rampage.” “Why, look-a-hyar, Mr. Harshaw,” demanded Bylor, “do you-uns call this a free country? Ain’t thar no way o’ stoppin’ him off? Goin’ ter hev five mo’ years o’ him on the bench?” “He’ll be impeached some day, mark my words,” Harshaw declared; and then he fell to eying the smoking fire with slow, sullen, vengeful speculation, and for the rest of the day he was not such jovial company as his general repute for good-fellowship might promise. In this interval of leisure which the recess afforded him, both as legislator and lawyer, Harshaw devoted himself to furthering his political prospects and strengthening his hold upon the predilections of the people. He was a man of many mental and moral phases: he sang loud and long at the revival at the cross-roads church; he attended rural merry-makings; he connived at having his own house “stormed” by a surprise party, the preparations being profuse and exhilarating, and the flavor of his hospitality was not impaired by his shaking hands with his guests, and violently promising to vote for them at the next election, each enlightened and independent citizen being himself not quite clear as to who was the prospective candidate: but the whole episode faded from recollection with the evening, mingling with the vain phantasmagoria of wild elation, and subsequent drowsiness, and retributive headache, and physical repentance. He went on a camp hunt with a party of roaring blades. The weather in the changeful Southern winter had turned singularly fine and dry; the air had all the crisp buoyancy of autumn and all the freshness of spring; fires drowsed on hearths; doors stood ajar; the sunshine was pervasive, warm, languorous, imbued with pensive vernal illusions. One might wonder to see the silent sere grass; were there indeed no whirring songs, no skittering points of light, hovering in mazy tangles, and telling the joy that existence might prove to the tiniest insect life? Birds? The trees were empty, but one must look to make sure: only the rising quail from the clumps of withered weeds; only the infrequent cry of the wild turkey down the bare, sunny vistas of the woods. The shadows of the deciduous trees were spare and