"He's been in the Harpeth Valley less than a year, and look at that.
We've been here all our lives and they don't know who we are,"
whispered father, with the same pride shining in his eyes that shone
upon the parson from the eyes of the gaunt prisoner, who rose and shook
hands with Mr. Goodloe with the sheriff beside him, while the rough old
judge from the bench waited his turn.
"We accommodated Jed by waiting until you come before we begun his
trial, Parson," the judge said, as he turned back to his bench, which
was a splint-bottom chair behind a rude table, dignity being lent to the
chair by its being the only one in the room. The rest of the population
of the court room of Hicks Center were seated upon benches made of split
and hewn logs.
"Thank you, Mr. Hilldrop," said the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, as he sat down
beside the prisoner and began a whispered conversation with him.
"The court have come to order. Shoot ahead, Jim, and tell us what Jed
have done and how he done it," commanded the judge, as he tilted back
his chair, took out his knife and began to whittle a stick of bright red
cedar. Twelve good men and true, attired in butternut trousers stuffed
into muddy boots, settled themselves in the jury box, which was a log
bench set at right angles to the other benches, a little apart from the
table and chair of the judge, and nine of them took out their knives and
bits of cedar and began to follow the lead of the judge in making fine
pink curls fall upon the floor.
"May it please your honor, the prisoner is charged with the stealing of
a young mule," said a lanky young mountain lawyer, who had put on a coat
over his flannel shirt and brushed a little patch of tow hair just above
his brows in deference to his position of prosecuting attorney.
"State yo' case," commanded the judge, as he tried the point of his
splinter against his thumb to test its whittled sharpness.
"Hiram Turner, over at Sycamore, lent Jed a team of mules to haul his
daughter, who married Jed, home in a wagon with her beds and truck, and
when he come down Paradise Ridge to git the team, Jed claimed one had
got away from him and run off in the big woods. They was a horse and
mule trader come along the same day Jed lost the mule and when Hi and
his boy, Bud, knocked Jed down in a fight they found fifty dollars on
him in a wad what he won't say where he got it."
With which concise statement the prosecuting attorney sat down and
fanned his perspiring brow with his ragged felt hat.