Major Parrifer came driving to the Court-house in his high carriage with a great bluster, his iron-grey hair standing up, and two grooms attending him. Only the magistrates who had granted the summons sat. The news had gone about like wild-fire, and several of them were in and about the town, but did not take their places. I don't believe there was one would have lifted his finger to save the Major from a month's imprisonment; but they did not care to sentence him to it. It was a regular battle. Major Parrifer was in an awful passion the whole time; asking, when he came in, how they dared summon him. _Him!_ Mr. Brandon, cool as a cucumber, answered in his squeaky voice, that when a complaint of breaking the law was preferred before them and sworn to by witnesses, they could only act upon it. First of all, the Major denied the facts. _He_ work in his garden on a Sunday!--the very supposition was preposterous! Upon which George Reed, who was in his best clothes, and looked every bit as good as the Major, and far pleasanter, testified to what he had seen. Major Parrifer, dancing with temper when he found he had been looked at through the hedge, and that it was Reed who had looked, gave the lie direct. He called his gardener, Richard Hotty, ordering him to testify whether he, the Major, ever worked in his garden, either on Sundays or week-days. "Hotty was working himself, gentlemen," interposed George Reed. "He was picking peas; and he helped to weed the onion-bed. But it was done by his master's orders, so it would be unjust to punish him." The Major turned on Reed as if he would strike him, and demanded of the magistrates why they permitted the fellow to interrupt. They ordered Reed to be quiet, and told Hotty to proceed. But Hotty was one of those slow men to whom anything like evasion is difficult. His master had thinned the apricot tree that Sunday morning; he had helped to weed the onion-bed; Hotty, conscious of the fact, but not liking to admit it, stammered and stuttered, and made a poor figure of himself. Mr. Brandon thought he would help him out. "Did you see your master pick the apricots?" "I see him pick--just a few; green 'uns," answered Hotty, shuffling from one leg to the other in his perplexity. "'Twarn't to be called work, sir." "Oh! And did he help you to weed the onion-bed?" "There warn't a dozen weeds in it in all, as the Major said to me at the time," returned Hotty. "He see 'em, and stooped down on the spur o' the moment, and me too. We had 'em up in a twinkling. 'Twarn't work, sir; couldn't be called it nohow. The Major, he never do work at no time." Blossom had not arrived, and it was hard to tell how the thing would terminate: the Major had this witness, Hotty, such as he was, protesting that nothing to be called work was done. Reed had no witness, as yet. "Old Jacobson is keeping Blossom back, Johnny," whispered Tod. "It's a sin and a shame." "No, he is not," I said. "Look there!"