"Eager? Man, it was a stampede! I reckon that every male inhabitant within a radius of five miles was there when I opened the meeting with a few choice words--every man but one, and he comes in just a little later in this tale. They surely did turn out. It was as perfect a mass meeting as any I've ever seen, but the crowd itself didn't get much of a chance to talk--not individually anyhow. They were simply the chorus of 'ayes' which the town's big man paused now and then for them to voice. "He did the talking, Flash. They called him 'Judge'--they most always do in those towns. He most certainly monopolized the conversation, and while he gave his monologue, I sat and got the best of them down on paper. They thought I was taking notes. I'll show you his picture some day. He's the meanest man I ever met yet--and I've met a few! Puffy-faced and red, and too close between the eyes. Fat, too! Somehow I'm ashamed of being plump myself, since meeting him. "He did all the talking, and from the very first time he opened his mouth I knew he was lying. You can always tell a professional liar; he lies too smoothly, somehow. Well, to judge from his story Conway was the only unspotted cherub child that had ever been born and bred in that section. Oh, yes, _he'd_ seen the promise in Conway; _he_ knew that Conway was to be the pride and joy of the community, right from the first. _He'd_ always said so! Why, _he_ was the very man who had given him his first pointers in the game, when he was cleaning up all the rest of the boys in town, just by way of recreation. If I'd never had a suspicion before I'd have known just from those slick sentences of his that Conway had never been anything in that village but a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he is today. "But I didn't have any reason to contradict him, did I? He was doing all that I could ask, and more. For there wasn't a man in that whole crowd who dared to sneeze until he got his cue from the Judge. But that fat man got his jolt finally, just the same, and got it good, too. "He had just finished telling how Conway had cleaned up the village kids, irrespective of size, whenever he felt the need of exercise, and was looking around at the circle behind him to give them a chance to back him up, when it happened. I told you a minute ago that I wished you could have seen that boy, as I saw him that night, standing there in that tavern doorway. You see, he'd come in so quietly that nobody had heard him--come in just in time to hear the Judge's last words. And when the Judge turned around he looked full into that boy's eyes. "Oh, he got his, good and plenty! I didn't watch him very closely because it was hard for me to take my eyes off the white face of that boy at the door. But I did see that he went pretty nearly purple for a minute, and I heard him gurgle, too, he was that surprised, before he caught his breath. Then he stuck out one hand and tried to bluff it out.