Mink looked at him with a sudden alarm in his dilated eyes, as if the contingency had been all undreamed of. “They’ll be bound ter let me out,” he declared. “I ain’t feared o’ the jury.” “If you don’t know what you did yourself, you can’t expect them to be much smarter in finding it out,” reasoned the lawyer. “I ain’t done nuthin’ ter keep me jailed this hyar way,” said Mink, hardily. “I feel it in my bones I’ll git out. I never try them bars,” nodding at the window, “but what I looks fur ’em ter break in my hand.” “See here,” said the lawyer, sternly, “you let ‘them bars’ alone; you ain’t going ter do yourself any good breaking jail.” He looked down meditatively at his feet, and stamped one of them that his trousers might slip further down over his boot-leg, which deported itself assertively and obtrusively, as if it were in the habit of being worn on the outside. “I don’t know,” he said reflectively, “if you want to be tried speedily, but what it’s best, anyhow. We won’t have Averill to preside; he’s incompetent in a number of civil cases, and Jim Gwinnan will hold court. He’s a”—he pursed up his red lips again, and looked about with an air intimating a high degree of contempt; Mink hung upon his words with an oppressive sense of helplessness and eagerness, that now and then found vent in an unconscious long-drawn sigh—“well, he’s a selfish, ambitious sort of fellow, and he’s found out it’s mighty popular to make a blow about cleaning up the docket, and avoiding the law’s delays, and trotting the lawyers right through. He’ll hold court till twelve o’clock at night, and he just opposes, tooth and nail, every motion for delay. I reckon he’d make it look as if we were afraid to come to trial, if we wanted a continuance; so it’s just as well, if you feel ready, for we mightn’t get it, after all.” Mink experienced a new fear. “Ain’t he a mighty bad kind of a jedge ter hev?” he faltered, quaking before the mental vision of the man who held his fate in the hollow of his hand. “No,” said Harshaw musingly, “he ain’t a bad judge for us for this reason,—though he’s mighty apt to lean to public opinion, he’s a sound lawyer, and he’s mighty careful about his rulings. He don’t get reversed by the S’preme Court. That’s what he sits on the bench for: not to administer justice,—he don’t think about justice once a week,—but to be affirmed by the S’preme Court. He’s more particular than Averill in little things, and he won’t let the attorney-general walk over him, like Averill does,—sorter spunky.” “I hev seen the ’torney-gineral,—hearn him speak wunst. They ’lowed he war a fine speaker,” submitted Mink, anxious concerning the untried, unmeasured forces about to be arrayed against him. “Mighty fine,” said Harshaw, derisively. “Got a beautiful voice—for calling hogs!”