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Certain of these visitors found the bar-room on the ground floor of the tavern across the road more attractive than the court-room, and as evening came the loud talking in that direction told that the visits had not been fruitless.

Perfect order, however, prevailed in the court, until one evening one of these visitors, a young man named Turkle, who had been spending the afternoon at the bar, made his way into the court-room. He was clad in a dingy, weather-stained overcoat and an old slouch hat. He sank into a seat at the end of a bench near the door and, being very drunk, soon began to talk aloud to those about him.

“Silence!” called the Sheriff over the heads of the crowd from his desk in front, and those near the man cautioned him to stop talking. A moment later, however, he began again. Again the Sheriff roared “Silence!” But by this time the hot air of the court-room had warmed up Mr. Turkle, and in answer to the warning of those about him, he declared in a maudlin tone, that he “Warn’t goin’ to keep silence.”

“I got ‘s much right to talk ‘s anyone, and I’ma goin’ to talk ‘s much ‘s I please.”

His friends tried to silence him, and the Sheriff made his way through the crowd and endeavored to induce him to leave the court-room. But it was to no purpose. Jim Turkle was much too “far gone” to know what he was doing, though he was in a delightfully good humor. He merely hugged the Sheriff and laughed drunkenly.

“Aleck, you jist go ‘way f’om here. I ain’t a-goin’ to shet up. You shet up yourself. I ‘m a-goin’ to talk all I please. Now, you hear it.”

Then as if to atone for his rudeness, he caught the Sheriff roughly by the arm and pulled him toward him:

“Aleck, how ‘s the case goin’? Is Mandy a goin’ to win? Is that old rascal rulin’ right!”

The Sheriff urged something in a low voice, but Turkle would not be silenced.

“Now you see thar,” he broke out with a laugh to those about him, “did n’t I tell you Aleck wa’ n ‘t nothin’ but a’ ol’ drunkard? What d’ you s’pose the ol’ rascal wants me to do? He wants me to go over there to the bar and git drunk like ‘im, and I ain’t goin’ to do it. I never drink. I ‘ve come here to see that my cousin Mandy’s chil’ern gits their patrimony, and I ain’ a goin’ to ‘sociate with these here drunken fellows like Aleck Thompson.”

The Sheriff made a final effort. He spoke positively, but Turkle would not heed.

“Oh, ‘Judge’ be damned! You and I know that ol’ fellow loves a dram jest ‘s well ‘s the best of ’em–jest ‘s well ‘s you do. Look at his face. You think he got that drinkin’ well-water! Bet yer he ‘s got a bottle in ‘s pocket right now.”

A titter ran through the crowd, but was suddenly stopped.

A quiet voice was heard from the other end of the court-room, and a deathly silence fell on the assemblage.

“Suspend for a moment, gentlemen, if you please. Mr. Sheriff, bring that person to the bar of the Court.”

The crowd parted as if by magic, and the Sheriff led his drunken constituent to the bar, where his befuddled brain took in just enough of the situation to make him quiet enough. The Judge bent his sternest look on him until he quailed.

“Have you no more sense of propriety than to disturb a court of justice in the exercise of its high function?”

Turkle, however, was too drunk to understand this. He tried to steady himself against the bar.

“I ain’t is-turbed no Court of function, and anybody ‘t says so, Jedge, iz a liar.” He dragged his hand across his mouth and tried to look around upon the crowd with an air of drunken triumph, but he staggered and would have fallen had not the Sheriff caught and supported him.