“He ain’t even here!” he whispered to Jeff. “I hope to God he’s forgot. Then the co’t will give you a _lawyer_!” The sheriff pointed out the table for the defendant and his lawyer. Kirby sat down beside Jeff; the Carsons found a place on the front bench of the main court-room. “Silence in the court!” cried the sheriff. Overawed, and with a queer feeling that he was choking, old Jeff saw the judge enter in his black robes, while the courthouse rose and stood until His Honor was seated. Yonder in an ante-room, laughing and chatting, he made out young Burton Evans, prosecuting attorney, strong, ruddy, confident. And then, last, down the aisle came old Colonel Donaldson, dressed like a preacher or an undertaker, in a long black coat with a narrow white tie. He shook hands flabbily; he walked over to the table below the clerk’s desk and carefully placed on it a small bundle, wrapped in paper. He came back and sat down at his table, with Jeff between him and Kirby. The court grew quiet. In a haze the old man rose, Donaldson beside him. Crisp, quick, accusing, Burton Evans, glancing fiercely now and then into the old man’s eyes, read off the indictment, long, meaningless, full of legal phrases. The jury was picked, Donaldson after a few careless questions, discarding six of them, then relapsing into his chair. The trial of old Jeff Potter was on. * * * * * It was in some respects the strangest case ever tried in that old court-room; for Colonel Donaldson, sitting listless and abstracted beside his client, lived up to the worst predictions of Kirby. He just let everything slide. The judge, an old man himself, looked now and then at this strange lawyer for the defense with something like a frown. Jeff was too dazed to say anything. Only Kirby fought--fought in angry whispers, leaning across Jeff, his eyes blazing into Donaldson’s. Three witnesses for the State told the same story of the row in the store. The negroes who had passed along the road described having seen him going toward the store about twelve o’clock that night. He had stopped, they said, as if to hide, and hadn’t answered when they called him by name. No, he didn’t have a lantern, or if he had one it wasn’t lit. “Ask ’em,” whispered Kirby to Donaldson, “how they know it was Jeff Potter in the dark. Ask ’em, sir. Ask ’em!” “Why, my dear sir,” retorted Donaldson in a whisper hard and dry, “my client here doesn’t even deny it.” Then Jake testified that at daybreak he saw him coming back from the direction of the store. And Tom Kelly declared that he had trailed the old man into a swamp, and had arrested him there while he was trying to make his get-away. “Ask him, Colonel Donaldson,” whispered Kirby again, eyes fierce, “how he knows Jeff was trying to get away.” Old Donaldson didn’t even look at the magistrate now. “Well, just let that pass,” he answered. “My God!” gasped Kirby.