He had not seen the commotion among the watching negroes when he rose and hurried across the field; he had not seen them beckoning to someone coming along the road. Now, far in the woods, he did not hear the steps behind him as he pushed through the undergrowth that fringed the swamp. He found the bush he wanted and began his work. He had stained her to the waist, a rich, dark-red color; he was all intent on his task, when he heard the rustle of leaves behind him, and turned. What he saw made him put the figure quickly in his pocket, as if to hide her from those narrowed eyes. For there, straight at him, head and shoulders above the bushes, came Tom Kelly, rural policeman. “Tryin’ to git away, was you, ol’ man?” grinned Kelly. “Well, it’s bad policy, an’ you’re old enough to know it.” Then solemnly, with eyes still narrowed, as if within him resided all the dignity and all the sternness of the law: “I’ve got a warrant here for you, swore out this afternoon befo’ Magistrate Kirby by Frank Blainey. Come along now, an’ don’t raise no trouble.” * * * * * It might all have been different if the old man had listened to his friends--to Squire Kirby, who next morning bound him over to court, and to Bill Carson, who went on his bond, two thousand dollars it was, for hadn’t he tried to make a get-away, and hadn’t Frank Blainey bitterly opposed turning him loose at all? The squire and Carson, in a conference after the preliminary trial, advised him to employ to defend him Allen and Cathcart, both of them young, energetic, and highly successful lawyers, and offered between them to advance the money to pay the bill. It wasn’t because he doubted their friendship, or was ungrateful, that he did not heed their advice. But these lawyers were young, their minds were taken up with big affairs. What was an old man to them? Then Jeff had his prejudices, too. More than once, when he was in the county seat, he had seen on the windows of the town skyscraper the gilded sign of Allen and Cathcart. He had seen their big cars and their handsome homes on Main Street. Now, in his extremity, and in his ignorance also, he distrusted them with the poor man’s distrust of the ostentatiously well-to-do. He did not want Allen and Cathcart. Even while Kirby and Carson talked, his mind, in relief, had turned to another lawyer, old like himself, and neither rich nor ostentatious--old Colonel Donaldson, whom Sam Blainey used to employ to look up deeds, who had come out one day to fish with him and Sam. This was the lawyer he wanted. * * * * *