They forgot the ceremonious solemnity of the moment and the little, birdlike figure upon the top step trying not to show too plainly upon his face a sense of his own importance--they forgot everything but the portend of the scene which the Judge was handling in so masterful a fashion. The latter's descent from his seat to the ground was deliberate, even for him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not have equaled the results which the very profundity of his silence achieved. There was a momentous promise in his gravity, a hint of catastrophe in the tilt of his head. Like two receding waves the tight ranks opened before him, clearing a path for his heavy-footed advance to the post-office doors--a lane of bulging eyes and clicking tongues such as Old Jerry in all his days had never provoked. And the latter stood there stock still in the middle of the entrance, too dazed at first to grasp the whole meaning of the situation, until he, too, was swept aside, without so much as a glance or a word, by one majestic sweep of the Judge's hand. Old Jerry's sparrowlike, thinly, wistful face flamed red, and then faded a ghastly white, but no one seemed conscious at that moment of the ignominy of it all. It was hours later that they recalled it and realized that they had looked upon history in the making. No one noticed the old man's faltering descent of the steps, or saw that he paused in his slow way to the buggy to turn back and stand looking about him in a kind of bewildered desperation. For the gaze of all had swung from the Judge's broad, disappearing back to the face of the boy who was sitting in the buckboard, totally unconscious of that battery of eyes, smiling to himself. He even chuckled aloud once--Young Denny did--a muffled, reasonless sort of a chuckle, as if he did not even know they were there. It was almost as though he were playing straight into the Judge's own plan, for the effect of the mirth upon the group on the walk was electrical. It sent a shiver of anticipation through it from end to end. And then, like the eyes of one man, their eyes swung back again from the ragged bruise across the boy's chin to meet the Judge as he reappeared.