“I’ve stopped ye already,” said Deputy Sheriff Newberry serenely. “Under the circumstances it don’t become you to tell me what I can’t do. You’ll be permitted to proceed on your way to Albion after Jedge Wiggin attends to your case. So you might as well soople down and take it calm.”

“But you don’t understand, you don’t know who you’re holding up in this high-handed fashion. You are interfering with——”

“Wait, Hitchens!” cut in the other man, giving a glance at his watch. “Never mind telling him who we are.”

“’Tain’t necessary,” stated Newberry. “You’ll have to tell the jedge, anyhow.”

“How long,” asked the man with the watch, “will it require to get through with this business so that we may go on. It is most important that we should get that train.”

“Wull,” drawled the deputy, “if the jedge is around handy, and he don’t read you too long a lecture before he slaps on the fine, mebbe you’ll git started ag’in in half or three-quarters of an hour; ’tain’t likely to be more’n an hour, anyhow.”

“Half an hour will make us miss the train. Can’t we fix it with you?”

“Now take keer, take keer! Don’t you go for to offer no bribes to an officer of the law. I couldn’t take them nohow,” he added as Constable Small came hurrying up with Constable Buzzell wheezing and sniffling at his heels.

“But,” protested Hitchens, “if you knew who——”

“Never mind that,” interrupted the older man sharply. “The other business will have to wait. I have a curiosity to see just how Judge Wiggin handles cases of this sort.”

“Your cur’osity,” assured Deputy Sheriff Newberry, swinging open the tonneau door, “will be satisfied. Git in, boys!”

When the three men had all piled into the rear of the car the one in command directed Hitchens to drive straight down the long main street of the town, and proceeded slowly.

Their appearance in the village was the signal for various inhabitants who observed them to grin and wag their heads, making uncomplimentary and derisive remarks, while a number of small boys, hooting and laughing, assembled and followed the car as far as Turner’s grocery, over which, in a bare and sparsely furnished room, Judge Wiggin dispensed justice by mulcting the unfortunate speeders who were arraigned before him. 

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