Smiles appeared on faces all round the table; and as the comicality of the whole affair more and more struck upon their astonished minds, the smiles became a general laugh, the laugh a roar. And this mirth had so good-humored a note that Solomon, taking heart, looked about the table with a sheepish grin. But his heart sank and his grin vanished when his eyes fell upon Abijah Keith. For Abijah did not smile. He sat grim as fate, stern disapproval of all this levity expressed in every deep fold of his wrinkled old countenance. A formidable person was Abijah. He had a great brush of white hair, which stood up fiercely from his narrow forehead; a high, arched nose like the beak of a hawk, on which rested a pair of huge round spectacles; a mouth like a straight line inclosed between a great parenthesis of leathery wrinkles. Up from under his old-fashioned stock, round a chin like a paving-stone, curled an aggressive, white, wiry beard, and his blue eyes were steel-bright and hard. "Can't see what you're cackling so for!" he exclaimed, his shrill accents full of contempt. "Actin' like a passel of hens! There's a man shot, ain't they? Somebody shot him, didn't they? He"--and Abijah pointed a knotted, skinny, hard old finger at the shrinking Solomon--"he shot him, didn't he? Ser'us business, _I_ call it. Guess the grand jury's got suthin' to say to it, hain't they? Cat? Cat's foot, _I_ say. Likely story, likely story. Don't believe a word on 't." Solomon dared to steal a look, and was not reassured to see in the jurymen's faces doubt replacing mirth. Then Hiram Hopkins's hearty voice, ringing with opposition, struck upon his delighted ear. He remembered Hiram's dislike for the cantankerous Keith. Here perhaps was a defender. "Oh, come, Mr. Keith! Oh, come now!" he heard Hopkins exclaim. "What's the use of raising a rumpus? It wasn't nothing but bird shot. Folks don't go murdering folks with bird shot." "Don't care if 't was bird shot!" came Abijah's snapping tones. "Don't care if 't was pin-heads; principle's the same." "It is, it is!" admitted Solomon, in his soul. "Well," said Hiram, with a common sense in which Mr. Peaslee took comfort, "the practical effect is mighty different. Gentlemen," he added to the jurors, "I can't see that we've got any call to go any further with this. Peaslee was just shooting at a cat. I don't see the sense of taking up the time of the court and makin' expense for any such foolishness. I say we'd better dismiss young Edwards's case, and Peaslee's along with it. It's such fool doings, I think we'd better, if only to keep folks from laughing at the grand jury." Solomon's heart was in his mouth. Would the others take this view--or Keith's? "Oily talk, dretful oily talk!" came Abijah's fierce pipe. "Don't take any stock in 't. Shot him, didn't he? Grand juror--what difference does that make? If they ain't fit, weed 'em out--weed 'em out!"