Tom sat regarding the crowd with such feelings as a gladiator doomed to mortal combat might have had in looking on the curious spectators in the Coliseum. Mrs. Grayson and Barbara had been provided with chairs within the bar; but on his mother and sister Tom did not dare to let his eyes rest. He saw, however, without looking directly at them, that little Janet was standing by Barbara, and that his uncle sat with crest-fallen face by his mother's side, and that his Aunt Charlotte had not come at all. Just outside of the bar, but immediately behind Mrs. Grayson, so as to form one of the group, stood Hiram Mason, erect and unblushing. One of the landmarks on which Tom's gaze rested oftenest was the burly form and round, ruddy face of Big Bob McCord, half way between the judge and the door. And at one of the open windows there presently appeared the lank countenance of Jake Hogan, who had climbed up from the outside, with the notion that he was somehow bound to supervise the administration of public justice. He managed with difficulty to get perching-room on the window-sill. Into two of the raised back seats a group of women had squeezed themselves to their last density, and among them, singular and conspicuous as she always was, sat Rachel Albaugh. Tom's was not the only eye that observed her; the lawyers from other counties were asking one another who she was, and she had even attracted the attention of the judge himself; for a gallant interest in good-looking women lingers late in a Virginia gentleman, no matter how austere his mold. At a pause in the preliminary proceedings the judge spoke to the clerk, sitting just below and in front of him, at a raised desk. "Magill, who is that girl?" he asked. "Which one, Judge?" queried Magill, pretending to be in doubt. "You needn't look so innocent. Of course I mean the one a modest man can't look at without being a little ashamed of himself. You know her well enough, I'm sure." "I s'pose yer Honor manes John Albaugh's daughter," said Magill. "She's the one that's at the bottom of all this row, they say." As soon as the judge heard that Rachel's beauty had something to do with the case in hand he fell back into his official reserve, as though he felt a scruple that to talk about her, or even to take note of her beauty, might be, in some sort, a receiving of evidence not properly before the court.