The eventful morning at the opening of the "fall term" of the court of Moscow came at length. Mrs. Grayson again put her house into the care of her neighbor Mely McCord, and she arranged that Bob McCord should stay at home so as to feed the cattle that night and the next morning. It was thought that Tom's trial would take place on the second day. Mrs. Grayson and Barbara drove into Moscow early on the first day of court, that they might give Tom all the sympathy and assistance possible. On that very first forenoon the grand jury heard such fragments of evidence as the public prosecutor thought necessary to bring before them, and found an indictment against Thomas Grayson, Junior, for murder in the first degree. In the prevailing state of public opinion a true bill would almost have been found if no evidence had been before them. Delay in such cases was not to be thought of in that time of summary justice; dilatory postponements were certainly not to be expected in a court presided over, as this one was, by Judge Watkins. He was a man approaching sixty years of age, with a sallow, withered face; a victim to hot biscuit and dyspepsia; arbitrary and petulant, but with deep-set, intelligent black eyes. Though his temper was infirm, his voice crabbed, and his administration of justice austere and unrelenting, he was eminently just, and full of the honorable if somewhat irascible pride of a Virginian with a superstitious reverence for his "family." Judge Watkins came of an ancestry who were famous only for courageously holding up their heads and doing nothing that they considered unworthy of gentlemen. Their greatest pride was that they had always been proud. The judge's coat hung loosely on his frame, and his trousers were generally drawn up in wrinkles so as to show the half of his boot-legs. His garments were, moreover, well worn and rather coarse; like his planter ancestors, he never fancied that dress could add anything to the dignity of a gentleman. The substantial distinction of a gentleman, in his estimation, consisted in being of a "good family," and in preferring to lose one's life rather than to lie, and to take another man's life rather than to suffer the reproach of falsehood or cowardice. It was characteristic of a Virginian of this type to have something like a detestation for clothes, except in so far as they served for decency and warmth; all the great difference which separated a respected gentleman from a despised fop lay in this fierce contempt for appearances. Judge Watkins left fine coats and gold watches for those who needed such decorations; he clothed himself in homespun and family pride. When the indictment was read, the judge, looking from under his overhanging, grizzled eyebrows, said, "When can we try this case?" The counsel on both sides knew that he intended to dispatch this disagreeable business promptly. As he put the question, Judge Watkins looked first at Allen, the prosecuting attorney, and then at Lincoln.