A rush of chill air swept the group about the sprawling stove as he opened the door and made each member lift his head, each after a fashion that was startlingly indicative of the man himself. For Judge Maynard wheeled sharply as the cold blast struck him--wheeled with head flung back challengingly, and a harsh rebuke in every feature--while old Dave Shepard turned and merely shivered. He just shivered and flinched a little from the draft, appealingly. The rest registered an ascending scale of emotions betwixt and between. Just as he knew he would find them they sat. Judge Maynard had the floor; and it was an easy thing to read that he had all but reached the crisis of his recital. Any man could have read that merely from the protest in the faces of the rest. And yet Old Jerry simply stood there and swept the group with serene and dangerous geniality. "Evenin', folks," he saluted them mildly. His mildness was like a match to the fuse. Judge Maynard pounded his fat knee with a fatter fist, and exploded thunderously: "Shut that door!" he roared. "Shut that door!" Old Jerry complied with amazing alacrity. The very panels shivered with the force of the swing that slammed it close. The Judge should have known right there--he should have read the writing on the wall--and yet he failed to do that thing. Instead, he turned back once more to his audience--back to his interrupted tale, and left Old Jerry standing there before the door, ignored. "As I was sayin'." He cleared his throat. "As I was sayin' when this unnecessary interruption occurred, I realized right from the moment when I opened the door and saw him standing there in front of me, grinning, and his chin cut wide open, that there was something wrong. I am a discerning man--and I knew! And it didn't take me long to convince him--not very long!--that there were other communities which would find him more welcome than this one. Maybe I was harsh--maybe I was--but harsh cases require harsh remedies. And because he didn't have the money, I offered to let him have enough to carry him out of town, and something to keep him about as long as he'll last now, I'm thinking, although that place of his isn't worth as much as the paper to write the mortgage on. "I knew it had come at last--but, at that, I didn't get anything that I wanted to call real proof until after we'd drawn up the papers and signed 'em, and were about ready to start back. Then, when we were coming down the steps of the clerk's office, I got all the proof I wanted, and a little more than that. He--he stumbled just about then, and would have gone down on his face if I hadn't held him up. And he was laughing out loud to himself, chuckling, with one fist full of money fit to draw a crowd. And he pulled away from me just when I was trying to force him into the buggy--pulled away and sort of leered up at me, waving that handful of bills right under my nose.