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I turned to the Warden again. My own summing up differed materially from his estimate, but I did not thrust mine upon him. He had had, of course, a much wider experience among criminals–I, in fact, had had none at all–and could not be deceived by outward appearances.

“You say they are going to try him to-day?” I asked.

“Yes, at two o’clock. Nearly that now,” and he glanced at his watch. “All the witnesses are down, I hear. They claim there’s something else mixed up in it besides robbing the mail, but I don’t remember what. So many of these cases comin’ and goin’ all the time! His old father was in to see him yesterday, and a girl. Some o’ the men said she was his sweetheart, but he don’t look like that kind. You oughter seen his father, though. Greatest jay you ever see. Looked like a fly-up-the-creek. Girl warn’t much better lookin’. They make ’em out o’ brick-clay and ham fat up in them mountains. Ain’t human, half on ’em. Better go over and see the trial.”

I waited in the Warden’s office until the deputies came for the prisoner. When they had formed in line on the sidewalk I followed behind the posse, crossing the street with them to the Court-house. The prisoner walked ahead, handcuffed to a deputy who was a head shorter than he and half his size. A second officer walked behind; I kept close to this rear deputy and could see every movement he made. I noticed that his fingers never left his hip pocket and that his eye never wavered from the slouch hat on the prisoner’s head. He evidently intended to take no chances with a man who could have made mince-meat of both of them had his hands been free.

We parted at the main entrance, the prisoner, with head erect and a certain fearless, uncowed look on his boyish face, preceding the deputies down a short flight of stone steps, closely followed by the officer.

The trial, I could see, had evidently excited unusual interest. When I mounted the main flight to the corridor opening into the trial chamber and entered the great hallway, it was crowded with mountaineers–wild, shaggy, unkempt-looking fellows, most of them. All were dressed in the garb of their locality: coarse, rawhide shoes, deerskin waistcoats, rough, butternut-dyed trousers and coats, and a coon-skin or army slouch hat worn over one eye. Many of them had their saddle-bags with them. There being no benches, those who were not standing were squatting on their haunches, their shoulders against the bare wall. Others were huddled close to the radiators. The smell of escaping steam from these radiators, mingling with the fumes of tobacco and the effluvia from so many closely packed human bodies, made the air stifling.

I edged my way through the crowd and pushed through the court-room door. The Judge was just taking his seat–a dull, heavy-looking man with a bald head, a pair of flabby, clean-shaven cheeks, and two small eyes that looked from under white eyebrows. Half-way up his forehead rested a pair of gold spectacles. The jury had evidently been out for luncheon, for they were picking their teeth and settling themselves comfortably in their chairs.

The court-room–a new one–outraged, as usual, in its construction every known law of proportion, the ceiling being twice too high for the walls, and the big, uncurtained windows (they were all on one side) letting in a glare of light that made silhouettes of every object seen against it. Only by the closest attention could one hear or see in a room like this.

The seating of the Judge was the signal for the admission of the crowd in the corridor, who filed in through the door, some forgetting to remove their hats, others passing the doorkeeper in a defiant way. Each man, as soon as his eyes became accustomed to the glare from the windows, looked furtively toward the prisoners’ box. Bud Tilden was already in his seat between the two deputies, his hands unshackled, his blue eyes searching the Judge’s face, his big slouch hat on the floor at his feet. What was yet in store for him would drop from the lips of this face.