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The Judge’s eyes had never left him.

“Mr. Sheriff, take this intoxicated creature and confine him in the county gaol until the expiration of the term. The very existence of a court of justice depends upon the observance of order. Order must be preserved and the dignity of the Court maintained.”

There was a stir–half of horror–throughout the court-room. Put a man in that jail just for being tight!

Then the Sheriff on one side and his deputy on the other, led the culprit out, now sufficiently quiet and half whimpering. A considerable portion of the crowd followed him.

Outside, the prisoner was sober enough, and he begged hard to be let off and allowed to go home. His friends, too, joined in his petition and promised to guarantee that he would not come back again during the term of court. But the Sheriff was firm.

“No. The Judge told me to put you in jail and I ‘m goin’ to do it.” He took two huge iron keys from his deputy and rattled them fiercely.

Turkle shrank back with horror.

“You ain’t goin’ to put me in thar, Aleck! Not in that hole! Not just for a little drop o’ whiskey. It was your whiskey, too, Aleck. I was drinkin’ yo’ health, Aleck. You know I was.”

“The Judge won’t know anything about it. He ‘ll never think of it again,” pleaded several of Turkle’s friends. “You know he has ordered a drunken man put there before and never said any more about it–just told you to discharge him next day.”

Turkle stiffened up with hope.

“Yes, Aleck.” He leaned on the Sheriff’s arm heavily. “He ‘s drunk himself–I don’t mean that, I mean you ‘re drunk–oh, no–I mean I’m drunk. Everybody ‘s drunk.”

“Yes, you ‘ve gone and called me a drunkard before the Court. Now I ‘m goin’ to show you.” Thompson rattled his big keys again savagely.

Turkle caught him with both hands.

“Oh, Aleck, don’t talk that a-way,” he pleaded in a tremulous voice. “Don’t talk that a-way!” He burst into tears and flung his arms around the Sheriff’s neck. He protested that he had never, seen him take a drink in his life; he would go and tell the Judge so; if necessary, he would swear to it on a Bible.

“Aleck, you know I love you better than anybody in this world–except my wife and children. Yes, better than them–better than Jinny. Jinny will tell you that herself. Oh! Aleck!” He clung to him and sobbed!

His friends indorsed this and declared that they would bring him back if the Judge demanded his presence. They would “promise to bring him back dead or alive at any time he sent for him.”

As Turkle and his friends were always warm supporters of the Sheriff, a fact of which they did not fail to remind him, Thompson was not averse to letting him off, especially as he felt tolerably sure that the Judge would, as they said, forget all about the matter, or, if he remembered it, would, as he had done before, simply order him to discharge the prisoner. So, after dragging the culprit to the jail door to scare him well and make his clemency the more impressive, he turned him over to the others on condition that he would mount his mule and go straight home and not come back again during the term. This Turkle was so glad to do that he struck out at once for the stable at what Thompson called a “turkey trot,” and five minutes later he was galloping down the road, swinging mightily on his sorrel mule, but whipping for life.

That night Thompson was much toasted about the court-house for his humanity. Several of his admirers, indeed, got into somewhat the same condition that Turkle had been in.

Even Dick Creel, who had come to court that day, lapsed from virtue and fell a victim to the general hilarity.

III

The next morning when court was opened, the Judge was even more than usually dignified and formal. The customary routine of the morning was gone through with; the orders of the day before were read and were signed by the Judge with more than wonted solemnity. The Clerk, a benignant-looking old man with a red face and a white beard, took up his book and adjusted his glasses to call the pending docket: the case of “Dolittle vs. Dolittle’s Ex’ex.,” and the array of counsel drew their chairs up to the bar and prepared for the work of the day, when the Judge, taking off his spectacles, turned to the Sheriff’s desk.