As is natural, many of them said they had known as well as they wanted to know that he was at the Ralston House. Others shook their heads, wondering why Tom Drake hadn’t managed to get him away, and predicting it would go hard with Paul, as giving himself up was a proof that he was guilty. Others took a different view, and thought he had done a magnanimous thing which would tell in his favor, and so the discussion went on, and Miss Hansford’s house was cleaned and her knees recovered their strength and she put a dollar in the contribution box two successive Sundays and did not appear at all disturbed about the coming trial. CHAPTER XLII. THE SECOND TRIAL. The broken bars to the window of the jail had been repaired, and Paul was in his old quarters, to which a part of the furniture carried there before from the Ralston House had been returned. Tom did not show so much anxiety to fit up the room as he had done, nor was he as often there during the short time which elapsed between Paul’s surrender and his trial. His negligence, however, was in a measure made up by Sherry, who regularly every morning trotted through the town to the jail, giving first a loud bark as a greeting and then scratching on the door for admittance, and when that was refused lying down under the window from which Paul occasionally spoke to him. At noon he would go home for his dinner, play a little while with Beauty, the pug, whom Paul had bought in the early summer,—then going to Mrs. Ralston, who was now ill in bed with dread and apprehension, he would look at her with beseeching eyes, as if asking what had happened to take his master away and lick the hand with which she patted his head. This done he would trot back to the jail, bark to let Paul know he was there and stretch himself again under the window, growling if any one came near, as many did come, from curiosity to see the animal growing nearly as famous as Paul himself. At night he went home and staid there, but was back in the morning. Stevens tried two or three times to feed him and save him his long walks, but Sherry disdained the offered fare, preferring the exercise, which was not prolonged for any length of time.