Test Bank for Microeconomics Principles and

Applications 6th Edition Hall Lieberman

1111822565 9781285119434

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CHAPTER 5—ELASTICITY

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. The price elasticity of demand measures the responsiveness of quantity demanded to changes in price.
a. True
b. False
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

2. A price elasticity of demand of 2 for a specific cola means that if the price increases 1 percent, the
quantity demanded of the cola will decrease by 2 percent.
a. True
b. False
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

3. Another term that could be used for elasticity is

a. sensitivity
b. utility
c. surplus
d. profit
e. slope
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
 NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

4. The price elasticity of demand is important to firms because

a. it explains the relationship between income and demand for the goods they sell
b. it shows how price changes affect total expenditures on the goods they sell
c. the law of demand suggests that elasticity falls as total expenditures continuously rises
d. it helps identify the equilibrium price and quantity in the market
e. it relates price to supply
ANS: B PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

5. The sensitivity of one economic variable to changes in another variable is known as

a. the variability coefficient
b. elasticity
c. the sensitivity coefficient
d. the cross-variability coefficient
e. the law of demand
ANS: B PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

6. The price elasticity of demand measures the

a. responsiveness of a good's price to a change in quantity demanded
b. adaptability of suppliers when a change in demand alters the price of a good
c. responsiveness of quantity demanded to a change in a good's price
d. adaptability of buyers when there is a change in demand
e. responsiveness of quantity supplied to a change in quantity demanded
ANS: C PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

7. The price elasticity of demand is the

a. percentage change in price divided by the percentage change in quantity demanded
b. average change in price divided by the average change in quantity demanded
c. percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the percentage change in price
d. average change in price divided by the average change in quantity demanded
e. percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the average change in price
ANS: C PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

8. If the price elasticity of demand for Cheer detergent is 3.0, then a

a. 12 percent drop in price leads to a 36 percent rise in the quantity demanded
b. 12 percent drop in price leads to a 4 percent rise in the quantity demanded
c. $1,000 drop in price leads to a 3,000-unit rise in the quantity demanded
d. $1,000 drop in price leads to a 333-unit rise in the quantity demanded
e. 12 percent rise in price leads to a 36 percent rise in the quantity demanded
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
 NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Analysis

9. When calculating the price elasticity of demand, we assume that the price of the good changes while
all other variables affecting
a. demand except buyers' incomes remain constant
b. demand except the population size remain constant
c. demand and supply remain constant
d. supply remain constant
e. demand remain constant
ANS: E PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Analysis

10. The concept of elasticity is used to

a. indicate the economy's ability to rebound from a recession
b. measure the robustness of a variable
c. measure the sensitivity of one variable to changes in another
d. measure price changes
e. measure income changes
ANS: C PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

11. In measuring the sensitivity of demand, the

a. price and income elasticities refer to movements along the demand curve; other elasticities
refer to shifts of the entire demand curve
b. price and cross-price elasticities analyze movements along the demand curve; other
elasticities refer to shifts of the entire demand curve
c. income and cross-price elasticities refer to movements along the demand curve; price
elasticity refers to shifts of the entire demand curve
d. price elasticity refers to movements along the demand curve; income and cross-price
elasticities refer to shifts of the entire demand curve
e. income elasticity refers to movements along the demand curve; other elasticities refer to
shifts of the entire demand curve
ANS: D PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Challenging
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

12. If a 10 percent rise in the price of bananas leads to a 20 percent reduction in the quantity of bananas
demanded, then the price elasticity of demand is 0.50.
a. True
b. False
ANS: B PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

13. If a 10 percent rise in the price of bananas leads to a 20 percent reduction in the quantity of bananas
demanded, then the price elasticity of demand is 2.00.
a. True
b. False
 ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension

14. If the price of a good increases from $20 to $25 and the quantity demanded declines from 15 to 10
units of the good, the price elasticity of demand is 5.
a. True
b. False
ANS: B PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Analysis

15. Suppose that a local supermarket sells apples and oranges for 50 cents apiece, and at these prices is
able to sell 100 apples and 200 oranges per week. One week, the supermarket lowered the price per
apple to 40 cents and sold 120 apples. The next week, they lowered the price per orange to 40 cents
(after raising the price per apple back to 50 cents) and sold 240 oranges. These results imply that the
a. price elasticity of apples is lower than the price elasticity of oranges
b. price elasticity of apples is higher than the price elasticity of oranges
c. demand for apples is more price sensitive than the demand for oranges
d. demand for oranges is more price sensitive than the demand for apples
e. price elasticities of demand for apples and oranges are the same over these price ranges
ANS: E PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Challenging
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Application

16. A $1.00 increase in the price of a restaurant meal results in a drop in quantity demanded of 5 meals.
Which of the following statements is correct?
a. The slope of the demand curve is -1/5; there is insufficient information to determine the
price elasticity of demand.
b. The price elasticity of demand is -1/5; there is insufficient information to determine the
slope of the demand curve.
c. Both the slope of the demand curve and the price elasticity of demand are equal to -1/5.
d. There is insufficient information to determine either the slope of the demand curve or the
price elasticity of demand.
e. The slope of the demand curve is -1/5; the price elasticity of demand is 5.
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Application

17. If a 20 percent decrease in the price of chicken results in a 10 percent increase in the quantity
demanded, the price elasticity of demand has a value of
a. 0.5
b. 2
c. 1
d. 0.1
e. none of these
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Easy
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Comprehension
18. The price elasticity of demand is
a. irrelevant to the determination of prices, incomes, and interest rates
b. indeterminate in most cases
c. the percentage change in price divided by the percentage change in quantity demanded
d. the percentage change in price with respect to the percentage change in quantity supplied
e. the percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the percentage change in price
ANS: E PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

Figure 5-1
Quantity
Good Price Demanded
Haircuts per Week $20 40
$16 60
Manicures per Week $12 80
$ 8 120

19. Figure 5-1 shows the prices of two services offered by Earl's Barber Shop and the resulting quantities
demanded by customers. In this example, the price elasticity of demand for manicures (using the
midpoint formula) is
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 0.5
e. 0.4
ANS: A PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

20. Figure 5-1 shows the prices of two services offered by Earl's Barber Shop and the resulting quantities
demanded by customers. In this example, the price elasticity of demand for haircuts (using the
midpoint formula) is
a. 1
b. 1.8
c. 3.5
d. 2.25
e. 0.5
ANS: B PTS: 1 DIF: Difficulty: Moderate
NAT: BUSPROG: Analytic STA: DISC: Elasticity
TOP: Price Elasticity of Demand KEY: Bloom's: Knowledge

21. Figure 5-1 shows the prices of two services offered by Earl's Barber Shop and the resulting quantities
demanded by customers. Suppose that the current price for a haircut is $20 and the current price for a
manicure is $12, and Earl has a sale of $4 off the price of either a haircut or a manicure. In this
example,
a. haircuts have the smaller absolute change in quantity demanded and the more elastic
demand
b. Earl can earn more revenue from manicures at the lower price
c. Earl should decrease the number of spaces in his shop allocated to haircuts
d. the demand for haircuts is unitary elastic
Another document from Scribd.com that is
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 XVIII
COLONEL ROYALL and Diana drove into town in the morning; it was
a long drive from Eshcol, and the road led past Paradise Ridge. Diana,
from her side of the carriage, noticed the little cabin where Jean Bartlett
had died, and saw the shambling figure of Zeb leaning against the door-
post. Zeb was talking to a well-dressed man whose back was toward her.
A low-growing horse-chestnut partly hid his figure, but afterwards she
remembered a curious familiarity about it. At the time her heart was
bitter. She had heard nothing but Mrs. Eaton’s version of the scandal of
Paradise Ridge for a month, and once, when she drove past the Cross-
Roads, she had seen Sammy’s chubby figure sprawling under the trees
beside Caleb Trench’s office.
If he were the child’s father, he had certainly taken up the burden
squarely. Diana pushed all thought of it out of her mind by main force,
yet two hours later it would come back. She remembered, too, that
meeting on the trail, and her heart quaked. In some mysterious,
unfathomable way the man loomed up before her and mastered her will;
she could not cast him out, and she stormed against him and against
herself. Outwardly she was listening to Colonel Royall. At heart, too, she
was deeply concerned about her father; the colonel was failing, he had
been failing ever since spring set in. All her life Diana had felt that, in
spite of their devotion to each other, there was a door shut between them,
she had never had his full confidence. Yet, she could not tell how she
knew this, what delicate intuition revealed the fact of his reticence. She
had twice asked Dr. Cheyney what secret trouble her father had, and the
old man had looked guilty, even when he denied all knowledge. Diana
felt the presence of grief, and she had assumed that it was especially
poignant at the season when he kept the anniversary of his wife’s death.
Yet, lately, she wondered that he had never taken her to her mother’s
grave. Mrs. Royall had died when Diana was three years old, and was
buried in Virginia. More than this Diana had never known, but she did
know that her room at Broad Acres had been locked the day of her death
and that no one ever went there except her father and the old negro
woman who kept it spotless and “just as Miss Letty left it.”
Neither Colonel Royall nor old Judy ever vouchsafed any explanation of
this room, its quaintly beautiful furniture and the apparently unchanging
spotlessness of the muslin curtains and the white valance of the
mahogany four-poster. Once, when she was a child, Diana had crept in
there and hidden under the bed, but hearing the key turn in the lock when
old Judy left the room, her small heart had quaked with fear and she had
remained crouching in a corner, still under the bed, not daring to look out
lest she should indeed see a beautiful and ghostly lady seated at the
polished toilet-table, or hear her step upon the floor. She stayed there
three hours, then terror and loneliness prevailed and she fancied she did
hear something; it was, perhaps, the rustle of wings, for she had been
told that angels had wings, and if her mamma were dead she was, of
course, an angel. The rustle, therefore, of imaginary wings was more
than Diana could bear, and she lifted up her voice and wept. They had
been searching the house for her, and it was her father who drew her out
from under the bed and carried her, weeping, to the nursery. Then he
spoke briefly but terribly to the mammy in charge, and Diana never crept
under the white valance again.
She remembered that scene to-day as the carriage drove on under the tall
shade trees, and she remembered that Colonel Royall had never looked
so ill at this time of the year since the time when he was stricken with
fever in midsummer, when she was barely fifteen. Then he had been out
of his head for three days and she had heard him call some one “Letty!”
and then cry out: “God forgive me—there is the child!” He had been
eighteen months recovering, and she saw presages of illness in his face;
his eyes were resting sadly and absently, too, on the familiar landscape.
Diana winced, again conscious of the shut door. It is hard to wait on at
the threshold of the heart we love.
They were crossing the bridge when a long silence was broken. Below
them some negroes were chanting in a flatboat, and their voices were
beautiful.
“Away down South in de fields of cotton,
Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,
Look away, look away,
Look away, look away!”
“Pa,” said Diana suddenly, “do you believe in the verdict?”
The colonel took off his hat and pushed back his thick white hair. “I
reckon I’ve got to, Di,” he replied reluctantly.
“Then you think Jacob is a bully and a fraud,” said Diana, with the
unsparing frankness of youth.
“Heaven forbid!” said the colonel gently.
“I thought you wanted me to marry him,” she pursued, victory in her eye.
The colonel reddened. “Diana,” he said, “I don’t want you to marry
anybody.”
She smiled. “Thank you,” she said; “after all, the verdict has done some
good in this State, Colonel Royall.”
They were at the court-house door now, and there was a crowd in the
square. The colonel got down and helped out Diana, and they walked
into the arched entrance of the basement together. “I didn’t want to leave
you out there to be stared at by that mob,” said the colonel; “people seem
to know us at a glance.”
Diana laughed softly. “Of course no one would remember you,” she said
maliciously; “they’re looking at my new hat.”
“I reckon they are,” said her father dryly; “we’ll have to find a place to
hide it in.”
As he spoke they passed the last doorkeeper, and walked down the stone-
paved corridor toward the elevator. It was absolutely still. On the left
hand was a small room with one large window looking out into the court
where a tree of heaven was growing. It had sprung from a seed and no
one had cut it down. The window was barred, but the cool air of the
court came in, for the sash was open. It was a room that they called “the
cage,” because prisoners waited there to be summoned to the court-room
to hear the verdict, but Colonel Royall did not know this. There were a
narrow lounge in it, two chairs and a table.
“Wait here,” he said to Diana, “I shan’t be ten minutes. I want to see
Judge Ladd, and I know where he is up-stairs. Court has adjourned for
luncheon, and you won’t be disturbed.”
Diana went in obediently and sat down in the chair by the window. She
could see nothing but the court enclosed on four sides by the old brick
building, and shaded in the centre by the slender tree of heaven. There
was no possible view of the street from this room. Opposite the door was
the blank wall of the hall; on the other side of that wall were the rooms
of the Registrar of Wills and the Probate Court. Outside the door a spiral
iron staircase ascended to the offices of the State’s attorney; around the
corner was the elevator and to this Colonel Royall went.
Diana leaned back in her chair and surveyed the chill little room; on the
walls were written various reflections of waiting prisoners. None were as
eloquent as Sir Walter Raleigh’s message to the world, but several meant
the same thing in less heroic English. The colonel had been gone ten
minutes, and his daughter was watching the branches of the tree as they
stirred slightly, as if touched by some tremulous breath, for no wind
could reach them here.
It was then that she heard a quick step in the corridor and knew it
intuitively. She was not surprised when Caleb Trench stopped
involuntarily at the door. They had scarcely met in two months, but the
color rushed into her face; she seemed to see him again in the spring
woods, though now the hedgerows were showing goldenrod.
Involuntarily, too, she rose and they stood facing each other. She tried to
speak naturally, but nothing but a platitude came to her lips.
“I congratulate you,” she said foolishly, “on your victory.”
“Miss Royall, I am sorry that everything I do seems like a personal
attack upon your people,” he replied at once, and he had never appeared
to better advantage; “like the spiteful revenge of a foolish duellist, a
sensational politician. Will you do me the justice to believe that my
position is painful?”
Diana looked at him and hated herself because her breath came so short;
was she afraid of him? Perish the thought! “I always try to be just,” she
began with dignity, and then finished lamely, “of course we are a
prejudiced people at Eshcol.”
“You are like people everywhere,” he replied; “we all have our
prejudices. I wish mine were less. There is one thing I would like to say
to you, Miss Royall—” He stopped abruptly, and raised his head. Their
eyes met, and Diana knew that he was thinking of Jean Bartlett; she
turned crimson.
There was a long silence.
“I shall not say it,” he said, and his strong face saddened. What right had
he to thrust his confidence upon her? “You are waiting for your father?”
he added; “may I not escort you to another room? This—is not suitable.”
He wanted to add that he was amazed at the colonel for leaving her there;
he did not yet fully understand the old man’s simplicity.
“I prefer to stay here,” Diana replied, a little coldly; “my father knows I
am here.”
It was Caleb’s turn to color. “I beg your pardon.” He stopped again, and
then turned and looked out of the window. “I fear I have lost even your
friendship now,” he said bitterly.
She did not reply at once; she was trying to discipline herself, and in the
pause both heard the great clock in the tower strike one.
“On the contrary, I thank you for offering to find me a pleasanter place to
wait in,” Diana said, with an effort at lightness. “It is a little dreary, but
I’m sure my father must be coming and—”
She stopped with a little cry of surprise, for there was suddenly the sharp
sound of a pistol shot, followed instantly by a second. The reports came
from the other side of the hall, and were followed by a tumult in the
street.
“What can it be?” she cried, in sudden terror for her father.
Caleb Trench swung around from the window with an awakening of
every sense that made him seem a tremendous vital force. He divined a
tragedy. Afterwards the girl remembered his face and was amazed at the
fact that she had obeyed him like a child.
“Wait here!” he exclaimed, “your father is safe. I will see what it is. On
no account leave this room now—promise me!”
She faltered. “I promise,” she said, and he was gone.
It seemed five minutes; it was in reality only ten seconds since the shots
were fired. Meanwhile, there was a tumult without, the shouting of men
and the rush of many feet. Diana stood still, trembling, her hands clasped
tightly together. Even afar off the voice of the mob is a fearsome thing.
 XIX
MEANWHILE Colonel Royall and Judge Ladd had been in consultation
in the judge’s private office, behind the court-room.
Governor Aylett and Jacob Eaton had definitely decided to appeal the
case, and a slight discrepancy in the stenographer’s notes had made it
necessary for Colonel Royall to review a part of his testimony. Having
disposed of these technicalities, the colonel found it difficult to depart.
He and Judge Ladd had been boys together; they met infrequently, and
the present situation was interesting.
The colonel stood with his thumbs inserted in the armholes of his
marseilles waistcoat, his hat on the back of his head, and a placid smile
on his lips. The judge sat at his table, smoking a huge cigar and
meditating. In his heart he rather resented the rapid rise of the unknown
young lawyer; he had worked his own way up inch by inch, and he had
no confidence in meteoric performances, and said so.
“Well,” said the colonel slowly, “I reckon I’d better not say anything,
Tommy, I’m on the wrong side of the fence; I’m Jacob’s cousin, though I
feel like his grandfather.”
The judge knocked the ashes from his cigar and said nothing. It was not
in his province to discuss the defendant just then.
“I’d give something handsome,” the colonel continued, “to know how in
mischief Trench got such a hold on the backwoodsmen. Todd follows
him about like a lapdog, too, yet he doesn’t hesitate to condemn Todd’s
methods of getting evidence.”
The judge grunted. “Heard about personal magnetism, haven’t you?” he
asked tartly; “that’s what he’s got. I sat up there on the bench and
listened when he began to address the jury. I’ve heard hundreds do it; I
know the ropes. Well, sir, he took me in; I thought he was going to fall
flat. He began as cool and slow and prosy as the worst old drone we’ve
got; then he went on. By George, David, I was spellbound. I clean forgot
where I was; I sat and gaped like a ninny! He cut right through their
evidence; he knocked their witnesses out one by one; he tore their logic
to pieces, and then he closed. There wasn’t a shred of ’em left. I charged
the jury? Yes, hang it! But I knew what the verdict would be, so did
every man-jack in the court-room.”
“Remarkable!” exclaimed the colonel. “I admit it, Tommy; I was there.”
“Then why the devil didn’t you say so?” snapped the judge.
“Thought you saw me; I was in the front row,” replied the colonel, with a
broad smile.
“See you?” retorted the judge fiercely, “see you? I didn’t see a damned
thing but that young shyster, and before he got through I could have
hugged him, yes, sir, hugged him for making that speech.”
The colonel shook with laughter. “Tommy,” he began.
But just then there were two sharp reports of a pistol near at hand,
followed by a tumult in the street below. Both men hurried to the
window, but the jutting wing of the court-room hid the center of interest,
and all they could see was the crowd of human beings huddled and
packed in the narrow entrance of the alley that led to the Criminal Court-
room. There were confused cries and shoutings, and almost immediately
the gong of the emergency ambulance.
“Some one’s been shot,” said Judge Ladd coolly; then he turned from the
window and halted with his finger on the bell.
The door from the court-room had opened abruptly and Judge Hollis
came in. Both Ladd and Colonel Royall faced him in some anxiety; there
was an electric current of excitement in the air.
“Yarnall has been shot dead,” he said briefly.
“My God!” exclaimed Judge Ladd.
Colonel Royall said nothing, but turned white.
“Have they got the assassin?” the judge demanded, recovering his self-
control.
“No,” replied Judge Hollis, a singular expression on his face. “No, the
shot was fired from the window of the court-room; the room was empty,
everybody at dinner, and the windows open; the pistol is on the floor,
two chambers empty. Only one man was seen in the window, a negro,
and he has escaped.”
“A negro?” the judge’s brows came down, “no, no!” Then he stopped
abruptly, and added, after a moment, “Was he recognized?”
“They say it was Juniper,” said Judge Hollis stolidly.
“Wild nonsense!” exclaimed Colonel Royall.
Hollis nodded. His hat was planted firmly on his head and he stood like a
rock. “Nevertheless, there’s wild talk of lynching. Ladd, I think we’d
better get the lieutenant-governor to call out the militia.”
The storm in the street below rose and fell, like a hurricane catching its
breath. Colonel Royall looked out of the window; the crowd in the alley
had overflowed into the square, and swollen there to overflow again in
living rivulets into every side street. He looked down on a living seething
mass of human beings. The sunlight was vivid white; the heat seemed to
palpitate in the square; low guttural cries came up. The names of Yarnall
and Eaton caught his ear. He remembered suddenly the significance of
Judge Hollis’ glance at him, and he did not need to remember the blood
feud. Suddenly he saw the crowd give way a little before a file of
mounted police, but it closed again sullenly, gathered the little group of
officers into its bosom and waited.
The old man had seen many a fierce fight, he had a scar that he had
received at the Battle of the Wilderness, he had a gunshot wound at
Gettysburg, but he felt that here was the grimmest of all revelations, the
slipping of the leash, the wild thing escaping from its cage, the mob! The
low fierce hum of anger came up and filled their ears, he heard the
voices behind him, the rushing feet of incoming messengers, the news of
the lieutenant-governor’s call for the militia. Then he suddenly
remembered Diana, and plunged abruptly down-stairs.
She had been waiting all this while alone in the lower room, yet, before
the colonel got there, Caleb Trench came back. He had just told her what
had happened when her father appeared.
“My dear child,” said the colonel, “I clean forgot you!”
Diana was very pale, but she smiled. “I know it,” she said, glancing at
Caleb. “Once father got excited at the races at Lexington and when some
one asked him his name, he couldn’t remember it. He paid a darkey a
quarter to go and ask Judge Hollis who he was! Colonel Royall, I must
go home.”
“So you must,” agreed the colonel, “but, my dear, the crowd is—er—is
rather noisy.”
“It’s a riot, isn’t it?” asked Diana, listening.
They heard, even then, the voice of it shake the still hot air. Then, quite
suddenly, a bugle sounded sweetly, clearly.
“The militia,” said the colonel, in a tone of relief. “I reckon we can go
home now.”
“You can go by the back way,” said Caleb quietly; “stay here a moment
and I’ll see that some one gets your carriage through the inner gate. The
troops will drive the mob out of the square.”
He had started to leave the room when Colonel Royall spoke. “Is—is
Yarnall really quite dead?”
“Killed instantly,” said Caleb, and went out.
Diana covered her face with her hands; she had been braving it out
before him. “Oh, pa!” she cried, “how dreadful! I was almost frightened
to death and—and I always thought I was brave.”
“You are,” said the colonel fondly; “I was a brute to forget you—but—
well, Diana, it was tremendously shocking.”
Diana’s face grew whiter. “Pa,” she said suddenly, “where—where is
Jacob?”
The colonel understood. “God knows!” he said, “but, Diana, he wasn’t in
the court-room!”
“Oh, thank God!” she said.
It was then that Caleb came back, and she noticed how pale he looked
and how worn, for the long weeks of preparation for the trial and the
final ordeal had worn him to the bone. “The carriage is waiting,” he said
simply, and made a movement, slight but definite, toward Diana. But she
had taken her father’s arm. The colonel thanked the younger man
heartily, yet his manner did not exactly convey an invitation. Caleb stood
aside, therefore, to let them pass. At the door, Diana stopped her father
with a slight pressure on his arm, and held out her hand.
“Good-bye,” she said quietly, “and thank you.”
Caleb watched them disappear down the corridor to the rear entrance
where two policemen were on guard. Then he went out, bareheaded, on
the front steps and glanced over the heads of the troopers sitting like
statues on their horses in front of the court-house. Yarnall’s body had
been carried in on a stretcher, and a detachment of the governor’s guard
filled the main entrance. Beyond the long files of soldiers the streets
were packed with men and women and even children. No one was
speaking now, no sounds were heard; there was, instead, a fearful pause,
a silence that seemed to Trench more dreadful than tumult. He stood an
instant looking at the scene, strangely touched by it, strangely moved,
too, at the thought of the strong man who had been laid low and whose
life was snapped at one flash, one single missile. Death stood there in the
open court.
Then some one cried out shrilly that there was Caleb Trench, the counsel
for Yarnall, the dead man’s victorious defender, and at the cry a cheer
went up, deep-throated, fierce, a signal for riot. The silence was gone;
the crowd broke, rushed forward, hurled itself against the line of fixed
bayonets, crying for the assassin.
A bugle sounded again. There was a long wavering flash of steel, as the
troopers charged amid cries and threats and flying missiles. A moment of
pandemonium and again the masses fell away and the cordon of steel
closed in about the square.
At the first sound of his name Caleb Trench had gone back into the
court-house. On the main staircase he saw Governor Aylett, Jacob Eaton
and a group of lawyers and officers of the militia. He passed them
silently and went up-stairs. Outside the court-room door was a guard of
police. The door of Judge Ladd’s inner office was open and he saw that it
was crowded with attorneys and officials. Judge Hollis came out and laid
his hand on Caleb’s shoulder.
“My boy,” he said, “this is the worst day’s work that has ever been done
here, and they want to lay it on a poor nigger.”
“I know,” replied Caleb, “he was the only one seen at the window.”
“Yes,” assented Judge Hollis, “but, by the Lord Harry, I’d give
something handsome to know—who was behind Juniper!”
 XX
IT was almost morning when Caleb Trench reached home, and the low
building where he had his office—he had closed his shop a month before
—was dark and cheerless.
The news of the shooting of Yarnall, and the subsequent rioting, had
traveled and multiplied like a reed blown upon the winds of heaven.
Aunt Charity had heard it and forgotten her charge. Shot was on guard
before the dead ashes in the kitchen stove, and Sammy lay asleep in his
little bed in the adjoining room. Fortunately the child seemed to have
slept through the hours that had elapsed since the old woman’s departure.
Caleb found some cold supper set out for him, in a cheerless fashion, and
shared it with Shot, strangely beset, all the while, with the thought of the
charm and comfort of Broad Acres, as it had been revealed to him in his
infrequent visits.
Diana’s presence in the basement of the court-house had changed his day
for him, and he recalled every expression of her charming face, the swift
shyness of her glance, when his own must have been too eloquent, and
every gesture and movement during their interview. At the same time he
reflected that nothing could have been more unusual than her presence
there in the prisoner’s cage, as it was called, and he was aware of a
feeling of relief that no one had found them there together at a time when
his smallest action was likely to be a matter of common public interest.
But predominant, even over these thoughts, was the new aspect of
affairs. Yarnall was dead, and as a factor in the gubernatorial fight he
was personally removed, but his tragic death was likely to be as potent as
his presence. He had already proved to the satisfaction of one jury that
his defeat in the convention was due solely to Aylett’s fraud and to
Eaton’s hatred, and it was improbable that, even in a violently partisan
community, justice should not be done at last. Besides, the frightful
manner of his taking off called aloud for expiation. The tumult at the
court-house testified to the passions that were stirred; the old feud
between the Eatons and the Yarnalls awoke, and men remembered, and
related, how Yarnall’s father had shot Jacob Eaton’s father. A shiver of
apprehension ran through the herded humanity in squares and alleys;
superstition stirred. Was this the requital? The old doctrine, an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth,—how it still appeals to the savage in men’s
blood. The crowd pressed in around the court-house where Yarnall’s
body lay in state, and outside, in a stiff cordon, stood sentries; the setting
sun flashed upon their bayonets as the long tense day wore to its close.
In the court-house Caleb Trench had worked tediously through the
evening with Judge Ladd and Judge Hollis. A thousand matters came up,
a thousand details had to be disposed of, and when he returned home at
midnight he was too exhausted physically and mentally to grapple long
with a problem at once tiresome and apparently insoluble. He dispatched
his supper, therefore, and putting out the light went to his own room.
But, before he could undress, Shot uttered a sharp warning bark, and
Caleb went back to the kitchen carrying a light, for the dog was perfectly
trained and not given to false alarms.
His master found him with his nose to the crack of the outer door, and
the slow but friendly movement of his tail that announced an
acquaintance. At the same time there was a low knock at the door.
“Who is there?” Caleb demanded, setting his light on the table and, at the
same time, preparing to unfasten the lock.
“Fo’ de Lawd, Marse Trench, let me in!” cried a muffled voice from the
outside, and, as Caleb opened the door, Juniper nearly fell across the
room.
“Shet de doah, massa,” he cried, “lock it; dey’s after me!”
It was intensely dark, being just about half an hour before dawn, and the
scent of morning was in the air. It seemed to Caleb, as he glanced out,
that the darkness had a softly dense effect, almost as if it actually had a
substance; he could not see ten yards from the threshold and the silence
was ominous. He shut the door and locked it and drew down the shade
over the kitchen window; afterwards he remembered this and wondered
if it were some impulse of secretiveness that prompted a movement that
he had not considered.
Meanwhile Juniper had fallen together in a miserable huddled heap by
the stove. His head was buried in his arms and he was sobbing in terror,
long-drawn shivering sobs that seemed to tear his very heart out. Trench
stood looking at him, knowing fully what suspicions were against the
black, and the terrible threats that had filled the town, seething as it was
with excitement and a natural hatred of the race. That Juniper had plotted
Yarnall’s death was an absurdity to Trench’s mind; that he might have
been the tool of another was barely possible. On the other hand, his
chances of justice from the mob were too small to be considered. His
very presence under any man’s roof was a danger as poignant as
pestilence. This last thought, however, had no weight with Caleb Trench.
The stray dog guarded his hearth, the nameless child lay asleep in the
next room, and now the hunted negro cowered before him. It was
characteristic of the man that the personal side of it, the interpretation
that might be put upon his conduct, never entered his calculations.
Instead, he looked long and sternly at the negro.
“Juniper,” he said, “you were the only person seen in the window of the
court-house before the assassination of Mr. Yarnall. Were you alone
there?”
Juniper cowered lower in his seat. “Fo’ de Lawd, Marse Trench, I can’t
tell you!” he sobbed.
“Who was in the room with you?” asked Trench sharply.
“I can’t tell!” the negro whimpered; “I don’ know.”
“Yes, you do,” said Caleb, “and you will be forced to tell it in court.
Probably, before you go to court, if the people catch you,” he added cold-
bloodedly.
Juniper fell on his knees; it seemed as if his face had turned lead color
instead of brown, and his teeth chattered. “Dey’s gwine ter lynch me!” he
sobbed, “an’ fo’ de Lawd, massa, I ain’t done it!”
Caleb looked at him unmoved. “If you know who did it, and do not tell,
you are what they call in law an accessory after the fact, and you can be
punished.”
Juniper shook from head to foot. “Marse Caleb,” he said, with sudden
solemnity, “de Lawd made us both, de white an’ de black, I ain’t gwine
ter b’lieb dat He’ll ferget me bekase I’se black! I ain’t murdered no one.”
Caleb regarded him in silence; the force and eloquence of Juniper’s
simple plea carried its own conviction. Yet, he knew that the negro could
name the murderer and was afraid to. There was a tense moment, then
far off a sound, awful in the darkness of early morning,—the swift
galloping of horses on the hard highroad.
“Dey’s comin’,” said Juniper in a dry whisper, his lips twisting; “dey’s
comin’ ter kill me—de Lawd hab mercy on my soul!”
Nearer drew the sound of horses’ feet, nearer the swift and awful death.
Caleb Trench blew out his light; through the window crevices showed
faint gray streaks. Shot was standing up now, growling. Caleb sent him
into the room with little Sammy, and shut the door on them. Then he
took the almost senseless negro by the collar and dragged him to the
stairs.
“Go up!” he ordered sternly; “go to the attic and drag up the ladder after
you.”
Juniper clung to him. “Save me!” he sobbed, “I ain’t dun it; I ain’t
murdered him!”
“Go!” ordered Caleb sharply.
Already there was a summons at his door, and he heard the trample of
the horses. Juniper went crawling up the stairs and disappeared into the
darkness above. Caleb went to his desk and took down the telephone
receiver, got a reply and sent a brief message; then he quietly put his
pistol in his pocket and went deliberately to the front door and threw it
open. As he did it some one cut the telephone connection, but it was too
late. In the brief interval since he had admitted the fugitive, day had
dawned in the far East, and the first light seemed to touch the world with
the whiteness of wood ashes; even the cottonwoods showed weirdly
across the road. All around the house were mounted men, and nearly
every man wore a black mask. The sight was gruesome, but it stirred
something like wrath in Caleb’s heart; how many men were here to
murder one poor frightened creature, with the intellect of a child and the
soul of a savage!
Caleb’s large figure seemed to fill the door, as he stood with folded arms
and looked out into the gray morning, unmoved as he would look some
day into the Valley of the Shadow. Of physical cowardice he knew
nothing, of moral weakness still less; he had the heroic obstinacy of an
isolated soul. It cost him nothing to be courageous, because he had never
known fear. Unconsciously, he was a born fighter; the scent of battle was
breath to his nostrils. He looked over the masked faces with kindling
eyes; here and there he recognized a man and named him, to the mask’s
infinite dismay.
“Your visit is a little early, gentlemen,” he said quietly, “but I am at
home.”
“Look here, Trench, we want that nigger!” they yelled back.
“You mean Juniper?” said Caleb coolly. “Well, you won’t get him from
me.”
“We know he’s about here!” was the angry retort, “and we’ll have him,
d’ye hear?”
“I hear,” said Caleb, slipping his hand into his pocket. “You can search
the woods; there are about three miles of them behind me, besides the
highroad to Paradise Ridge.”
“We’re going to search your house,” replied the leader; “that’s what
we’re going to do.”
“Are you?” said Caleb, in his usual tone, his eyes traveling over their
heads, through the ghostly outlines of the cottonwoods, past the tallest
pine to the brightening eastern sky.
Something in his aspect, something which is always present in supreme
courage,—that impalpable but strenuous thing which quells the hearts of
men before a leader,—quenched their fury.
“Look here, Caleb Trench, you were Yarnall’s lawyer; you ain’t in the
damned Eaton mess. Where’s that Eaton nigger?”
Caleb’s hand closed on the handle of his revolver in his pocket.
“Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “I happen to know that the negro, Juniper,
did not shoot Mr. Yarnall, and if I know where he is now I will not tell
you.”
“By God, you shall!” yelled the nearest rioter, swinging forward with
uplifted fist.
He swung almost on the muzzle of Caleb’s revolver.
“One step farther and you’re a dead man,” Trench said.
The would-be lyncher lurched backward. In the white light of dawn
Caleb’s gaunt figure loomed, his stern face showed its harshest lines, and
there was fire in his eyes. A stone flew and struck him a little below the
shoulder, another rattled on the shingles beside the door; there was a low
ominous roar from the mob; right and left men were dismounting, and
horses plunged and neighed.
“Give up that damned nigger or die yourself!” was the cry, taken up and
echoed.
Within the house Shot began to bark furiously, and there was suddenly
the shrill crying of a child.
“Jean Bartlett!” some one shouted.
“Ay, let’s hang him, too—for her sake!”
There were cheers and hisses. Caleb neither moved nor shut the door.
“Give us that nigger!” they howled, crowding up.
By a miracle, as it seemed, he had kept them about three yards from the
entrance in a semicircle, and here they thronged now. From the first they
had surrounded the house, and the possibility of an entrance being forced
in the rear flashed upon Caleb. But he counted a little on the curiosity
that kept them hanging on his movements, watching the leaders. He saw
at a glance that there was no real organization, that a motley crowd had
fallen in with the one popular idea of lynching the negro offender, and
that a breath of real fear would dissolve them like the mists which were
rolling along the river bottoms.
“Where’s that nigger?” came the cry again, and then: “It’s time you
remembered Jean Bartlett!”
One of the leaders, a big man whom Caleb failed to recognize, was still
mounted. He rose in his stirrups. “Hell!” he said, “he’s got the child; if
he hadn’t, I’d burn him out.”
“Gentlemen,” said Caleb coolly, raising his hand to command attention,
“I will give the child to your leader’s care if you wish to fire my house. I
do not want to be protected by the boy, nor by any false impression that I
am expiating an offense against Jean Bartlett.”
There was a moment of silence again, then a solitary cheer amid a storm
of hisses. A tumult of shoutings and blasphemies drowned all coherent
speech. Men struggled forward and stopped speechless, staring at the
unmoved figure in the door, and the grim muzzle of his six-shooter. It
was full day now, and murder and riot by daylight are tremendous things;
they make the soul of the coward quake. There were men here and there
in the crowd who shivered, and some never forgot it until their dying
day.
“Give us the nigger!”
Caleb made no reply; his finger was on the trigger. There was a wild
shout and, as they broke and rushed, Caleb fired. One man went down,
another fell back, the mob closed in, pandemonium reigned. Then there
was a warning cry from the rear, the clear note of a bugle, the thunder of
more horses’ hoofs, the flash of bayonets, and a file of troopers charged
down the long lane; there was a volley, a flash of fire and smoke. Men
mounted and rode for life, and others fell beneath the clubbed bayonets
into the trampled dust.
In the doorway Caleb Trench stood, white and disheveled, with blood on
his forehead, but still unharmed.
 XXI
COLONEL ROYALL was reading an extra edition of the morning paper;
it contained a full account of the attempted lynching, and the timely
arrival of the militia. The colonel was smoking a big cigar and the lines
of his face were more placid than they had been for a week, but his brow
clouded a little as he looked down the broad driveway and saw Jacob
Eaton approaching. Jacob, of late, had been somewhat in the nature of a
stormy petrel. Nor did the colonel feel unlimited confidence in the
younger man’s judgment; he was beginning to feel uneasy about certain
large transactions which he had trusted to Jacob’s management.
The situation, however, was uppermost in the colonel’s mind? He
dropped the paper across his knee and knocked the ashes out of his cigar.
Jacob’s smooth good looks had never been more apparent and he was
dressed with his usual elaborate care. Nothing could have sat on him
more lightly than the recent verdict, and the fact that he was out on bail.
Colonel Royall, who was mortified by it, looked at him with a feeling of
exasperation.
“Been in town?” he asked, after the exchange of greetings, as Jacob
ascended the piazza steps.
“All the morning,” he replied, sitting down on the low balustrade and
regarding the colonel from under heavy eyelids.
“How is it? Quiet?” The colonel was always sneakingly conscious of a
despicable feeling of panic when Jacob regarded him with that drooping
but stony stare.
“Militia is still out,” said Jacob calmly, “and if the disturbances continue
the governor threatens to call on Colonel Ross for a company of
regulars.”
“He’s nervous,” commented the colonel reflectively. “I don’t wonder.
How in the mischief did Aylett happen to be near Yarnall?”
Jacob looked pensive. “I don’t know,” he said; “I was in the rear corridor
by the State’s Attorney’s room. They say Aylett was crossing the
quadrangle just in front of Yarnall.”
The colonel smoked for a few moments in silence, then he took his cigar
from between his teeth. “What were you doing in the corridor?” he asked
pointedly.
Jacob took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “I was going to Colonel
Coad’s office, and I was the first to try to locate the shots outside the
court-house.”
“I was in Judge Ladd’s room,” said Colonel Royall deliberately, “and I
reckon that was as near as I want to be. I see by this”—he touched the
paper with his finger—“that Caleb Trench induced Juniper to surrender
to the authorities, and he says that he’s sure he can prove the negro’s
innocence.”
Jacob laughed, showing his teeth unpleasantly. “Probably he can,” he
remarked; “he’s under arrest himself.”
The colonel swung around in his chair. “Caleb Trench? What for?”
“For the assassination of Yarnall.”
“By gum!” said the colonel in honest wrath, “what rotten nonsense!”
Jacob said nothing; he continued to smoke his cigarette.
The colonel slapped the paper down on his knee. “When men’s blood is
heated, they run wild,” he said. “Why, Trench was Yarnall’s counsel;
he’d won the case for him—he—”
“Just so,” replied Jacob coolly; “you forget that Aylett had insulted
Trench twice in court, that he despised him as heartily as I do and that
Aylett was almost beside Yarnall!”
The colonel pushed his hat back on his head and thought. He knew that
Eaton hated Trench, but his mind did not embrace the enormity of a
hatred that could revel in such an accusation. “The charge then must be
that he meant to hit Aylett,” he said, after a long moment, “and that
makes him take big risks. These Yankees aren’t good shots, half of ’em.”
Jacob laughed unpleasantly. “Well, I reckon he wasn’t,” he remarked,
and as his thoughts went back to a certain gray morning in Little Neck
Meadow, his face reddened.
The colonel wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. “What did he want to
shoot Aylett for?” he demanded.
“You’ve forgotten, I suppose, that Aylett called him a liar twice in court,”
said Jacob dryly.
“He didn’t shoot you for a greater provocation,” retorted the colonel
bluntly.
“He was the only man found in the court-room with the smoking
weapon,” said Jacob. “Juniper ran away, and he’s been protecting
Juniper,—buying him off from testifying, I reckon.”
“I can’t understand why either he or Juniper was in the court-room,”
declared the colonel, frowning.
“Had good reason to be,” replied Jacob tartly, tossing his cigarette over
the rail.
“See here, Jacob,” said the colonel solemnly, “I’m an old man and your
relation, and I feel free to give you advice. You keep your oar out of it.”
Jacob laughed. “I’ve got to testify,” he drawled.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the colonel.
Then followed several moments of intense silence.
“Where’s Diana?” asked the young man at last, rising and flipping some
ashes off his coat.
“In the flower garden,” replied her father thoughtfully, “she’s seeing to
some plants for winter; I reckon she won’t want you around.”
Jacob looked more agreeable. “I think I’ll go all the same,” he said,
strolling away.
The colonel leaned forward in his chair and called after him. “Jacob, how
about these stocks? I wanted to sell out at eight and three quarter cents.”
Eaton paused reluctantly, his hands in his pockets. “You can next week,”
he said; “the market’s slumped this. You’d better let me handle that deal
right through, Cousin David.”
“You’ve been doing it straight along,” said the colonel. “I reckon I’d
better wake up and remember that I used to know something. I’m equal
to strong meats yet, Jacob, and you’ve been putting me on pap.”
“Oh, it’s all right!” said Jacob. “I’ll sell the shares out for you,” and he
departed.
The colonel sat watching him. The old thought that he would probably
marry Diana no longer had any attractions for him; he had lost
confidence in Jacob’s sleek complacence, and the recent testimony in
court had shaken it still more. Besides, he had a fine pride of family, and
the verdict against Jacob had irritated and mortified him. Nothing was
too good for Diana, and the fact that there was the shadow of a great
sorrow upon her made her even dearer to her father. He had never
thought that she had more than a passing fancy for Jacob, and lately he
had suspected that she disliked him. The colonel ruminated, strumming
on the piazza balustrade with absent fingers. Before him the long slope
of the lawn was still as green as summer, but the horse-chestnut burs
were open and the glossy nuts fell with every light breeze. Across the
road a single gum tree waved a branch of flame.
He was still sitting there when Kingdom-Come brought out a mint julep
and arranged it on the table at his elbow.
The colonel glanced up, conscious that the negro lingered. “What’s the
matter, King?” he asked good-humoredly.
“News from town, suh,” the black replied, flicking some dust off the
table with his napkin. “Dey’s tried ter storm de jail, suh. De militia
charged, an’ deyer’s been right smart shootin’.”
Colonel Royall looked out apprehensively over the slope to the south
which showed in the distance the spires and roofs of the city. A blue fog
of smoke hung low over it and the horizon beyond had the haze of
autumn. “Bad news,” said he, shaking his head.
“It suttinly am, suh,” agreed Kingdom-Come, “an’ dey do say dat Aunt
Charity ez gwine ter leave Juniper now fo’ sho.”
“She’s left him at intervals for forty years,” said the colonel, tasting his
julep; “I reckon he can stand it, King.”
The negro grinned. “I reckon so, suh,” he assented. “Juniper dun said
once dat he’d gib her her fare ef she’d go by rail an’ stay away!”
Just then Miss Kitty Broughton stopped her pony cart at the gate and
came across the lawn. The colonel rose ceremoniously and greeted her,
hat in hand.
“Where’s Diana?” Kitty asked eagerly.
“In the rose garden with Jacob, my dear,” said the colonel.
Kitty made a grimace. “Noblesse oblige,” she said; “I suppose I must
stay here. Colonel, isn’t it all dreadful? Grandfather can’t keep from
swearing, he isn’t respectable, and Aunt Sally has Sammy.” Kitty
blushed suddenly. “I took Shot, the dog, you know; they won’t let Mr.
Trench have bail.”
“It’s the most inexplicable thing I know of,” said the colonel, stroking his
white moustache. “Why Caleb Trench should shoot his own client—”
Kitty stared. “Why, Colonel, you know, don’t you, that the arrest was
made on Jacob Eaton’s affidavit?”
Colonel Royall leaned back in his chair, and Kitty found his expression
inexplicable. “How long have you known this?” he asked.
“Since morning,” said Kitty promptly. “Grandpa told us; he’s furious, but
he says it’s a good case. It seems Mr. Eaton saw Mr. Trench first in the
court-room. The two shots were fired, you know, in quick succession.
Juniper was seen by some one at the window just before; no one saw
who fired the shots, but Mr. Eaton met Caleb Trench leaving the room.
No one else was there, and Mr. Trench says that Juniper did not fire the
shots. Juniper is half dead with fright, and in the jail hospital; he went
out of his head this morning when the mob tried to rush the jail. It’s
awful; they say six people were killed and three wounded.”
“Caleb Trench wounded two last night,” said the colonel. He had the air
of a man in a dream.
“They won’t die,” replied Kitty, cold-bloodedly, “and it’s a good thing to
stop these lynchers. Wasn’t Mr. Trench grand? I’m dying to go and see
him and tell him how I admired the account of him facing the mob. What
does Di think?”
“She hasn’t said,” replied the colonel, suddenly remembering that
Diana’s silence was unusual. He looked apprehensively toward the rose
garden and saw the flutter of a white dress through an opening in the box
hedge. “Kitty,” he added abruptly, “you go over there and see Diana and
ask her yourself.”
“While Mr. Eaton’s there?” Kitty giggled. “I couldn’t, Colonel Royall;
he’d hate me.”
The colonel looked reflectively at the young girl sitting in the big chair
opposite. She was very pretty and her smile was charming. “I don’t think
he’d hate you, my dear,” he remarked dryly, “and I know Diana wants to
see you.”
Kitty hesitated. “I don’t like to interrupt,” she demurred.
“You won’t,” said the colonel, a little viciously.
Kitty rose and descended the steps to the lawn, nothing loath; then she
stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Mr. Trench will be tried
immediately,” she said; “the Grand Jury indicted him this morning.”
The colonel’s frown of perplexity deepened. “I call it indecent haste,” he
said.
“Grandpa is to defend him,” said Kitty, “and we’re proud of him. I think
Caleb Trench is a real hero, Colonel Royall.”
The colonel sighed. “I wish Jacob was,” he thought, but he did not speak.
 XXII
JUDGE HOLLIS was writing in his office. He had been writing five
hours and the green shade of his lamp was awry, while his briar-wood
had just gone out for the ninety-ninth time. Some one knocked twice on
the outer door before he noticed it. Then he shouted: “Come in!”
After some fumbling with the lock the door opened, and Zeb Bartlett’s
shambling figure lurched into the room. He came in boldly, but cowered
as he met the judge’s fierce expression. The old man swung around in his
chair and faced him, his great overhanging brows drawn together over
glowing eyes, and his lip thrust out.
The boy was stricken speechless, and stood hat in hand, feebly rubbing
the back of his head. The judge, who hated interruption and loathed
incompetence, scowled. “What d’ye want here?” he demanded.
Zeb wet his parched lips with his tongue. “I want the law on him,” he
mumbled; “I want the law on him!”
“What in thunder are you mumbling about?” demanded the old man
impatiently; “some one stole your wits?”
“It was him did my sister wrong,” Zeb said, his tongue loosed between
fear and hate; “it’s him, and I want him punished—now they’ve got
him!”
Judge Hollis threw the pen that he had been holding suspended into the
ink-well. “See here, Zeb,” he said, “if you can tell us who ruined your
poor crazed sister, why, by the Lord Harry, I’d like to punish him!”
Zeb looked cunning; he edged nearer to the desk. “I can tell you,” he
said, “I can tell you right cl’ar off, but—I want him punished!”
“May be the worst we can do is to make him take care of the child,” said
Judge Hollis.
“That won’t do,” said Zeb, “that ain’t enough; he left her to starve, and
me to starve—she tole me who it was!”
Judge Hollis was not without curiosity, but he restrained it manfully. He
even took his paper-cutter and folded the paper before him in little plaits.
“Zeb,” he said, “it’s a rotten business, but the girl’s dead and Caleb
Trench has taken the child and—”
“It’s him, curse him, it’s him!” Zeb cried, shaking his fist.
Judge Hollis dropped the paper-cutter and rose from his chair, his great
figure, in the long dark blue coat, towering.
“How dare you say that?” he demanded, “you cur—you skunk!”
But Zeb was ugly; he set his teeth, and his crazy eyes flashed. “I tell you
it’s him,” he cried; “ain’t I said she tole me?”
“Damn you, I don’t believe you,” the judge shouted; “it’s money you
want, money!” He grabbed the shaking boy by the nape of the neck, as a
dog takes a rat, and shook him. “You clear out,” he raged, “and you keep
your damned lying, dirty tongue still!” and flung him out and locked the
door.
Then, panting slightly, he went back to his seat, swung it to his desk
again, rolled back his cuffs and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
Then he pulled his pen out of the ink-well and shook the surplus ink over
the floor and began to write; he wrote two pages and dropped his pen.
His head sank, his big shoulders bowed over, he was lost in thought. He
thought there for an hour, while nothing stirred except the mouse that
was gnawing his old law-books and had persistently evaded Miss Sarah’s
vigilance. Then the judge brought his great fist down on his desk, and the
ink-well danced, and the pen rolled off.
“My God!” he exclaimed to himself, “I’ve loved him like a son, the girl
was treated like hell—it can’t be true!”
He rose, jammed his hat down on his head and walked out; he walked
the streets for hours.
It was very late when he was admitted to the old jail. It was past time to
admit visitors, but the judge was a privileged person. The warden gave
up his private room to him and sent for the prisoner. The lamp burnt low
on the desk, and the old judge sat before it, heavy with thought. He
looked up mechanically when Caleb came in with his quick firm step and
faced him. The two greeted each other without words, and Caleb sat
down, waiting. He knew his visitor had something on his mind.
Judge Hollis looked at him, studying him, studying the clear-cut lines,
the hollowed cheeks, the clear gray eyes, the chiseled lips,—not a
handsome face, but one of power. The sordid wretchedness of the story,
like a foul weed springing up to choke a useful plant, struck him again
with force and disgust.
“I’ve just seen Zeb Bartlett,” he said; “he’s raving to punish the man who
wronged his sister. He says you did it!” The old man glared fiercely at
the young one.
Caleb’s expression was slightly weary, distinctly disappointed: he had
hoped for something of importance. The story of Jean Bartlett was
utterly unimportant in his life. “I know it,” he said briefly; “it is easy to
accuse, more difficult to prove the truth.”
The judge leaned forward, his clasped hands hanging between his knees,
his head lowered. “Caleb,” he said, “maybe it’s not right to ask you, but,
between man and man, I’d like to know God’s truth.”
Caleb Trench returned the old man’s look calmly. “Judge,” he said,
“have you ever known me to steal?”
The judge shook his head.
“Or to lie?”
Again the judge dissented.
“Then why do you accuse me in your heart of wronging a half-witted
girl?” he asked coldly.
The judge rose from his chair and walked twice across the room; then he
stopped in front of the younger man. “Caleb,” he said, “by the Lord
Harry, I’m plumb ashamed to ask you to forgive me.”
Caleb smiled a little sadly. “Judge,” he said, “there’s nothing to forgive.
Without your friendship I should have been a lost man. I understand.
Slander has a hundred tongues.”
“Zeb Bartlett is shouting the accusation to the four winds of heaven, I
presume,” said the judge, “and there’s the child—you—”
“I’ve taken him,” said Caleb, “and I mean to keep him. I’ve known
poverty, I’ve known homelessness, I’ve known slander; the kid has got
to face it all, and he won’t do it without one friend.”
The judge looked at him a long time, then he went over and clapped his
hand down on his shoulder. “By the Lord Harry!” he said, “you’re a man,
and I respect you. Let them talk—to the devil!”
“Amen!” said Caleb Trench.
 XXIII
WHEN the case of the Commonwealth versus Caleb Trench was called,
it was found necessary to convene the court in the old criminal court-
room in the northeast corner of the quadrangle. The room from which
Yarnall had been shot, known as Criminal Court Number One, was too
open to the square, and too conveniently located as a storm center. The
old court-room facing northeast was smaller, and so poorly lighted that
dull mornings it was necessary to burn lights on the judge’s desk and at
the recorder’s table. It opened on the inner court, and the only thing seen
from the window was the tree of heaven, which was turning a dingy
yellow and dropping its frond-like leaves into the court below. During
half the trial Aaron Todd’s son and another youngster sat in this tree and
peered in the windows, the room being too crowded for admittance; but
when Miss Royall testified even the windows were so stuffed with
humanity that the two in the tree saw nothing, and roosted in
disappointment.
In the quadrangle before the court-house, and in a hollow square around
it, were the troops, through the whole trial, and after a while one got used
to the rattle of their guns as they changed at noon. Men fought for places
in the court-room, and the whole left-hand side was packed solid with
young and pretty women. The figure of Caleb Trench, since his famous
Cresset speech, had loomed large on the horizon, and the account of the
frustrated lynching added a thrilling touch of romance. Besides, Jacob
Eaton was to testify against him, and that alone would have drawn an
audience. The thrill of danger, the clash of the sentry’s rifle in the
quadrangle, the constant dread of riots, added a piquancy to the situation
that was like a dash of fine old wine in a ragout. The room was packed
to suffocation, and reporters for distant newspapers crowded the
reporters’ table, for the case was likely to be of national interest. The
doors and the corridors were thronged, and a long line waited admission
on the staircase. Some failed to get in the first or the second day, and
being desperate stayed all night outside, and so were admitted on the
third day.
Judge Hollis had charge of the defense, and it was expected that he
would ask a change of venue, but he did not. Instead he tried to get a
jury, using all his privileges to challenge. It was almost impossible to get
an unbiased juror and, at the end of a week, he had exhausted two panels
and was on another. On the fifteenth day he got a jury and the public
drew breath. Judge Ladd was on the bench,—a fair but choleric man, and
known to be rather unfavorable to the prisoner. Bail had been absolutely
refused, and Caleb Trench shared the fate of the other prisoners in the
jail, except, indeed, that he was doubly watched, for the tide of men’s
passions rose and fell. He had been almost a popular idol; he was,
therefore, doubly likely to be a popular victim, and Aylett went far and
wide declaring that he believed the shot was intended for him, and that
Yarnall had suddenly passed between him and the window at the fateful
moment.
On the other hand Jacob Eaton spoke freely of Jean Bartlett and her
child. The scandal traveled like a fire in prairie grass, and Jean, who had
been in life the Shameful Thing of Paradise Ridge, became now a
persecuted martyr, and Trench the monster who had ruined her life. The
fact that he had taken the child, instead of being in his favor, recoiled
strongly against him. He was watched as he sat in the prisoners’ dock,
and every expression of his stern and homely face was noted; the slight
awkwardness of his tall figure seemed more visible, and men were even
startled by his eyes. It may be added that the women found them most
interesting, especially when that sudden light flashed into them that had
cowed so many of the weaker brethren. Like all strong, blunt men, Caleb
had made his enemies, and now, in the hour of his need, they multiplied
like flies. Misfortune breeds such insects as readily as swamplands breed
mosquitoes.
“I’d be ashamed to say I knew that shyster,” one of the Eaton faction said
in the crowded court-room at noon recess, and Dr. Cheyney heard him.
The old man snorted. “I’m almighty glad he don’t know you,” he said
dryly.
The next day they began to take testimony. Juniper, the one person who
had been in the court-room at the time of the assassination, could not be
called at once, as he was still in the hospital, but he had made a
deposition that he did not know who fired the shots, that his back was
turned and that when he heard the reports he ran. This impossible
statement could not be shaken even by threats. Later, he would go on the
stand, but Judge Hollis had given up hope of the truth; he believed, at
heart, that Juniper was crazed with fright. Had he been hired to fire the
shots? The judge could not believe it, for he felt tolerably certain that
Juniper would have hit nothing.
The general belief outside, however, was that Caleb had used his
opportunity well and threatened or bribed the negro into making his
remarkable affidavit. In fact, Caleb was himself profoundly puzzled, yet
the testimony of Eaton, given clearly and apparently dispassionately, was
damaging. He had been in Colonel Coad’s office, he was coming along
the upper corridor, heard the shots and ran to the court-room, reaching
the door immediately before Sergeant O’More of the police; both men
met Caleb Trench coming out of the room, and on the floor, by the
window, was the revolver. No one else was in sight. Juniper’s flight had
been made at the first shot, and seven minutes only had elapsed before
any one could reach the court-room. Caleb Trench had been seen to enter
the building at twenty-five minutes to one o’clock, and his time up to the
assassination was unaccounted for. He said that he had been in the
basement of the building, but his statement did not give any legitimate
reason for the length of time between his entrance and his appearance in
the court-room. It took, in reality, just two minutes to reach the court-
room from the lower door by the staircase. Trench made no explanation
of the use of that twenty-five minutes, even to his counsel. Judge Hollis
stormed and grew angry, but Caleb pointed out the fact that the pistol
was not his, and he could prove it; this made the judge’s language
absolutely profane. The obstinacy of the prisoner resulted in a distinct
collapse at that point in the trial; it was evident that the time must be
accounted for, since the circumstantial evidence was strong.
The public prosecutor, Colonel Coad, was pressing in, scoring point by
point, and Judge Hollis fought and sparred and gave way, inwardly
swearing because he had to do so. Meanwhile, the prisoner was serene;
he took notes and tried to help his counsel, but he showed no signs of
trepidation and he would not admit any use for that time in the basement
of the court-house. Judge Hollis could not, therefore, put him on the
stand on his own behalf, and the old man grew purple with wrath.
“Look here, Mr. Trench,” he said, with bitter formality, “what damned
crotchet have you got in your head? What fool thing were you doing?
Working a penny-in-the-slot machine in the basement? Out with it, or I
walk out of this case.”
“And leave me to the tender mercies of my enemies,” said Caleb quietly;
“no, Judge, not yet! I can’t see my way clear to tell you.”
“Then I’m darned if I see mine to defend you!” snapped the judge.
They were in the prisoner’s cell at the jail, and Caleb got up and went to
the little barred window which overlooked the dreary courtyard where
the prisoners were exercising. After a moment, when he seemed to
mechanically count the blades of grass between the flagstones, he turned.
The judge was watching him, his hat on like a snuffer, as usual, and his
hands in pockets.
“Judge Hollis,” said Caleb quietly, “if I told you where I was, another
witness would have to be called, and neither you nor I would wish to call
that witness.”
The judge looked at him steadily; Caleb returned the look as steadily,
and there was a heavy silence.
“By the Lord Harry!” said the judge at last, “I believe you’d let ’em hang
you rather than give in a hair’s breadth.”
Then Caleb smiled his rare sweet smile.
The second long week of the trial wore to its close, and the web of
circumstantial evidence was clinging fast about the prisoner. Witnesses
had testified to his character and against it. The name of Jean Bartlett ran
around the court, and some men testified to a belief that Caleb was the
father of the child he had befriended. Judge Hollis did not attempt to
have the testimony ruled out; he let it go in, sitting back with folded arms
and a grim smile. He cross-examined Jacob Eaton twice, but made
nothing of it. Jacob was an excellent witness, and he showed no passion,
even when witnesses described the duel and his conduct to show his
motive in attacking Trench.
Sunday night Judge Hollis received a telephone message from Colonel
Royall, and, after his early supper, the judge ordered around his
rockaway and drove over, with Lysander beside him to hold the reins. He
found Mrs. Eaton in the drawing-room with Diana, and was coldly
received by Jacob’s mother; she resented any attempt to line up forces
against her son, and she regarded the defender of Caleb Trench as an
enemy to society. The judge bowed before her grimly.
“I thought you were in the city, madam,” he remarked.
Mrs. Eaton threw up her hands. “With that mob loose, and the soldiers?
My dear Judge! I wouldn’t stay for a million, and I’m a poor woman.
Good gracious, think of it! It’s just as I’ve always said,—you go on