The farmers came from all parts of the county in their best attire, in their best turnouts, from plain, springless road-wagons to glittering buggies. The wood which stretched on all sides from the spring was filled with vehicles, horses, mules, and even oxen. The grizzled veterans, battered as much by post-bellum hardship and toil as by war, came with their wives, sons, and daughters, and brought baskets to the rich contents of which any man was welcome. A crude platform had been erected near the spring under the shadiest trees, and upon this the speaker of the day was to hold forth. Behind the little impromptu table holding a glass pitcher of water and a tumbler, erected for Wiggin's special benefit, were a number of benches made of undressed boards. And to these seats the wives and daughters of the leading citizens were invited. Jabe Parsons, being a man of importance as a land-owner and an old soldier, was instructed on his arrival in his rickety buggy to escort his wife, who was gorgeously arrayed in a new green-and-red checked gingham gown with a sunbonnet to match, to the front seat on the platform, and he obeyed with a sort of ploughman's swagger that indicated his pride in the possession of a wife so widely known and respected. Indeed, no woman who had arrived--and she had come later than the rest--had caused such a ripple of comment. Always liked for her firmness in any stand she took in matters of church or social life, since her Amazonian rescue of Pete Warren from the very halter of death she was even more popular. The women of the county had not given much thought to the actual guilt or innocence of the boy, but they wanted Mrs. Parsons--as a specimen of their undervalued sex--to be right in that instance, as she had always been about every other matter upon which she had stood flat-footed, and so they all but cheered her on this first public appearance after conduct which 'had been so widely talked about. Really, if Wiggin could have had the reception Mrs. Parsons received from beaming eyes and faces he would have felt that his star, which had been rather below the horizon than above of late, had become a fixed ornament in the political heavens. But Wiggin gave no thought to her, and there's where he made a mistake. Women were beneath the notice of serious men, Wiggin thought, except as a means of controlling a husband's vote, and there he made another mistake. It would have been well for him if he could have noticed the fires of contempt in Mrs. Parsons' eyes as he made his way through the crowd, bowing right and left, and took his seat in the only chair on the platform, and proceeded, of course, to take a drink of water.