cow," said the butcher.

"I felt afraid I had been too hasty with her, and I was rather sorry I had been so decided—although, to be sure, she did n't pretend to deny that she had been communicating."

"Of course," said the butcher: "no use lyin' when you 're caught in the act."

"Well, after school, she stayed at her desk, fixing her dinner-pail, and putting her books in a strap, and all that, till all the rest had gone, and then she came up to my desk, where I was correcting compositions."

"Now for music!" said the butcher.

"She had been crying a little. Well, she looked straight in my face, and said she, 'Mr. Pollard, I just wanted to say to you that I was n't doing anything at all when you called me up;' and off she went. Now, that was just like her,—too proud to say a word before the school."

But here his listener's attention was diverted by the voice of the book-agent.

"The very best Bible for teachers, of course, is the limp-cover, protected edges, full Levant morocco, Oxford, silk-sewed, kid-lined, Bishop's Divinity Circuit, with concordance, maps of the Holy Land, weights, measures, and money-tables of the Jews. Nothing like having a really—"

"And so," said the captain, moving back his chair, "they let on the whole head of water, and scour out the channel to a T."

And then he rapped upon the table.

"Gentlemen," he said, "please draw your chairs up, and let us take another ballot."

The count resulted as before.

The foreman muttered something which had a scriptural sound. In a few moments he drew Mr. Eldridge and two others aside. "Gentlemen," he said to them, "I shall quietly divide the jury into watches, under your charge: ten can sleep, while one wakes to keep Mr. Smith discussing the question. I don't propose to have the night wasted."

And, by one man or another, Eli was kept awake.

"I don't see," said the book-agent, "why you should feel obliged to stick it out any longer. Of course, you are under obligations. But you 've done more than enough already, so as that he can't complain of you, and if you give in now, everybody 'll give you credit for trying to save your friend, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for giving in to the evidence. So you 'll get credit both ways."

An hour later, the tin-pedler came on duty. He had not followed closely the story about John Wood's loan, and had got it a little awry.

"Now, how foolish you be," he said, in a confidential tone. "Can't you see that if you cave in now, after stan'n' out nine hours"—and he looked at a silver watch with a brass chain, and stroked his goatee—"nine hours and twenty-seven minutes—that you 've made jest rumpus enough so as't he won't dare to foreclose on you, for fear they 'll say you went back on a trade. On t' other hand, if you hold clear out, he'll turn you out-o'-doors to-morrow, for a blind, so 's to look as if there wa' n't no trade between you. Once he gits off, he won't know Joseph, you bet! That's what I 'd do," he added, with a sly laugh. "Take your uncle's advice."

"The only trouble with that," said Eli, shortly, "is that I don't owe him anything."

"Oh," said the pedler; "that makes a difference. I understood you did."

Three o'clock came, and brought Mr. El-dridge. He found Eli worn out with excitement.

"Now, I don't judge you the way the others do," said Mr. Eldridge, in a low tone, with his hand on Eli's knee. "I know, as I told you, just the way you feel. But we can't help such things. Suppose, now, that I had kept dark, and allowed to the owners that that man was always sober, and I had heard, six months after, of thirty or forty men going to the bottom because the captain was a little off his base; and then to think of their wives and children at home. We have to do some hard things; but I say, do the square thing, and let her slide."

"But I can't believe he 's guilty," said Eli.

"But don't you allow," said Mr. Eldridge, "that eleven men are more sure to hit it right than one man?"

"Yes," said Eli, reluctantly, "as a general thing."

"Well, there's always got to be some give to a jury, just as in everything else, and you ought to lay right down on the rest of us. It is n't as if we were at all squirmish. Now, you know that if you hold out, he 'll be tried again."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Got to be—no other way," said Mr. Eldridge. "Now, the next time, there won't be anybody like you to stand out, and the judge 'll know of this scrape, and he'll just sock it to him."

Eli turned uneasily in his chair.

"And then it won't be understood in your place, and folks 'll turn against you every way, and, what's worse, let you alone."

"I can stand it," said Eli, angrily. "Let 'em do as they like. They can't kill me."

"They can kill your wife and break down your children," said Mr. Eldridge. "Women and children can't stand it. Now, there's that man they were speaking of; he lived down my way. He sued a poor, shiftless fellow that had come from Pennsylvania to his daughter's funeral, and had him arrested and taken off, crying, just before the funeral begun—after they 'd even set the flowers on the coffin; and nobody'd speak to him after that—they just let him alone; and after a while his wife took sick of it—she was a nice, kindly woman—and she had sort of hysterics, and finally he moved off West. And 't was n't long before the woman died. Now, you can't undertake to do different from everybody else."

"Well," said Eli, "I know I wish it was done with."

Mr. Eldridge stretched his arms and yawned. Then he began to walk up and down, and hum, out of tune. Then he stopped at Captain Thomas's chair.

"Suppose we try a ballot," he said. "He seems to give a little."

In a moment the foreman rapped.

"It is time we were taking another ballot, gentlemen," he said.

The sleepers rose, grumbling, from uneasy dreams.

"I will write 'guilty' on twelve ballots," said the foreman, "and if any one desires to write in 'not,' of course he can."

When the hat came to Eli, he took one of the ballots and held it in his hand a moment, and then he laid it on the table. There was a general murmur. The picture which Mr. El-dridge had drawn loomed up before him. But with a hasty hand he wrote in "not," dropped in the ballot, and going back to his chair by the window, sat down.

There was a cold wave of silence.

Then Eli suddenly walked up to the foreman and faced him.

"Now," he said, "we 'll stop. The very next turn breaks ground. If you, or any other man that you set on, tries to talk to me when I don't want to hear, to worry me to death—look out!"

How the long hours wore on! How easy, sometimes, to resist an open pressure, and how hard, with the resistance gone, to fight, as one that beats the air! How the prospect of a whole hostile town loomed up, in a mirage, before Eli! And then the picture rose before him of a long, stately bark, now building, whose owner had asked him yesterday to be first mate. And if his wife were only well, and he were only free from this night's trouble, how soon, upon the long, green waves, he could begin to redeem his little home!

And then came Mr. Eldridge, kind and friendly, to have another little chat.

Morning came, cold and drizzly. An officer knocked at the door, and called out, "Breakfast!" And in a moment, unwashed, and all uncombed, except the tin-pedler, who always carried a beard-comb in his pocket, they were marched across the street to the hotel.

There were a number of men on the piazza waiting to see them,—jurymen, witnesses, and the accused himself, for he was on bail. He had seen the procession the night before, and, like the others, had read its meaning.

"Eli knows I would n't do it," he had said to himself, "and he's going to hang out, sure."

The jury began to turn from the court-house door. Everybody looked. A file of two men, another file, another, another; would there come three men, and then one?