The night's shadows still lingered among the great, black tree-trunks draping the leafless boughs, but the sun's radiant lances were already lifting the white mists from the lowlands. Soft sounds coming up from the silent fields echoed the gentle awakening of flocks and herds, deepening, as the light brightened, into the eternal matin appeal of the dumb creature to human brotherhood. The birds alone were all wide awake and vividly astir. Flocks of plovers wheeled white-winged across the low-hung sky. A lonely sparrow-hawk swung high on seemingly motionless pinions. There were redbirds, too, and bluebirds and blackbirds--pewees, thrushes, vireos, kingfishers--all flocking in with the red and gold of the sunrise, making the dun meadows bright and melodious with their plumage and song. Miss Judy saw and heard them in pleased surprise. She could not recall having seen any of them that season, save two or three melancholy robins, drooping in the cold rain of the previous day. But here they all were, and singing as if _they_ had no doubt that spring had come, however doubtful mere mortals might be. It was light enough now to see the tavern which stood on the edge of the village. The sign of the tavern, a big rusty bell hung in a rough, rickety wooden frame, stood clear against the gray horizon, dangling its rotting rope, which few travellers ever came to pull. The court-house and the jail faced the tavern from the other side of the big road. The court-house, with its stately little pillars and its queer little cupola, looked like some small and shabby old gentleman in a very high, very tight stock. There were two terms of circuit court, lasting about a month, one in the spring and one in the fall. The quarterly and the county courts convened at stated periods. The magistrate's court, which was also in the court-house, was held usually and almost exclusively as the peace of the colored population might require. Fortunately, the magistrate was regarded with a good deal of wholesome awe, and it was fortunate that he lived in the village, inasmuch as his pacific services were likely to be needed at irregular and unexpected times. The county judge, however, found it entirely convenient to live in the country, on a farm near Oldfield, though he rode into the village and spent an hour or so in his office nearly every day. Judge John Stanley of the higher court lived a long way off, quite on the other side of the district, coming and going twice a year with the convening and adjournment of the spring and fall terms. He had lived in Oldfield when a young man, and up to the time that a terrible thing had happened. He was not to blame, yet it had blighted his whole life; it had driven him in horror away from the place which he had loved. It was a great loss to him to be separated from Miss Judy, the only mother he had known. But he used to return to Oldfield now and then until another misfortune made the place forever unendurable to him. After this only