Sampson, the foreman, glanced at Paige, the state's attorney. The young man's face wore an odd expression. Their eyes met, and Sampson's mouth began to twitch. Albion Small, who was "consid'able of a joker," suddenly choked. Farnsworth, having revealed to him in a flash the significance of the harmonica "with harp attachment," gave way and laughed outright.

   Smiles appeared on faces all round the table; and as the comicality of the whole affair more and more struck upon their astonished minds,

   the smiles became a general laugh, the laugh a roar. And this mirth had so good-humored a note that Solomon, taking heart, looked about the table with a sheepish grin.

   But his heart sank and his grin vanished when his eyes fell upon Abijah Keith. For Abijah did not smile. He sat grim as fate, stern disapproval of all this levity expressed in every deep fold of his wrinkled old countenance.

   A formidable person was Abijah. He had a great brush of white hair, which stood up fiercely from his narrow forehead; a high, arched nose like the beak of a hawk, on which

   rested a pair of huge round spectacles; a mouth like a straight line inclosed between a great parenthesis of leathery wrinkles. Up from under his old-fashioned stock, round a chin like a paving-stone, curled an aggressive, white, wiry beard, and his blue eyes were steel-bright and hard.

   "Can't see what you're cackling so for!" he exclaimed, his shrill accents full of contempt. "Actin' like a passel of hens! There's a man shot, ain't they? Somebody shot him, didn't they? He"—and Abijah pointed a knotted, skinny, hard old finger at the shrinking Solomon—"he shot him, didn't he? Ser'us

   business,

    I

   call it. Guess the grand jury's got suthin' to say to it, hain't they? Cat? Cat's foot,

    I

   say. Likely story, likely story. Don't believe a word on 't."

   Solomon dared to steal a look, and was not reassured to see in the jurymen's faces doubt replacing mirth. Then Hiram Hopkins's hearty voice, ringing with opposition, struck upon his delighted ear. He remembered Hiram's dislike for the cantankerous Keith. Here perhaps was a defender.

   "Oh, come, Mr. Keith! Oh, come now!" he heard Hopkins 

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