The next morning when court was opened, the Judge was even more than usually dignified and formal.  The customary routine of the morning was gone through with; the orders of the day before were read and were signed by the Judge with more than wonted solemnity.  The Clerk, a benignant-looking old man with a red face and a white beard, took up his book and adjusted his glasses to call the pending docket:  the case of “Dolittle vs.  Dolittle’s Ex’ex.,” and the array of counsel drew their chairs up to the bar and prepared for the work of the day, when the Judge, taking off his spectacles, turned to the Sheriff’s desk.

“Mr. Sheriff, bring in that unfortunate inebriate whom I sentenced to confinement in the gaol yesterday.  The Court, while sensible of the imperative necessity of protecting itself from all unseemly disorder and preserving its dignity undiminished, nevertheless always leans to the side of mercy.  The Court trusts that a night’s incarceration may have sufficiently sobered and chastened the poor creature.  The Court will therefore give him a brief admonition and will then discharge him.”

The Judge sat back in his large arm-chair and waited benignantly with his gaze resting placidly in front of him, while a deathly silence fell on the crowd and every eye in the courthouse was turned on the Sheriff.

Thompson, standing at his desk, was staring at the Judge with jaw dropped and a dazed look like a man who had suddenly to face judgment.  He opened his lips twice as if to speak, then turned and went slowly out of the court-house like a man in a dream, while those left behind looked in each other’s eyes, some half scared and others more than half amused.

Outside, Thompson stopped just between two of the great pillars.  He rammed his hands deep in his pockets and gazed vacantly over the court-green and up the road.

“What will he do with you!  Remove you!” asked two or three friends who had slipped out of the door behind him and now stood about him.

“He ’ll put me in jail ­and remove me.”

“No matter if he says black ’s white and white ’s black, don’t you open your mouth or you ’ll get it.  It ’s much as I can do to keep you out of jail this minute.”

“But, Sheriff !  But, Aleck !  Just wait a minute!  I don’t ­”

The next instant he was inside the courthouse and the Sheriff was marching him up the aisle between the upturned faces.  He planted him at the bar immediately before the Court, pulling off his hat in such a way as to drag his hair over his face and give him an even more dishevelled appearance than before.  Then he moved around to his own desk, keeping his eye fixed piercingly on the astonished Creel’s bewildered face.  A gasp went over the court-room, and the Bar stared at the prisoner in blank amazement.

The Judge alone appeared oblivious of his presence.  He had sat absolutely silent and motionless since he had given the order to the Sheriff to produce the prisoner, his face expressive of deep reflection.  Now he withdrew his eye from the ceiling.

“Oh!”

With impressive deliberation he put on his large gold-rimmed spectacles; sat up in his chair; assumed his most judicial expression, which sat curiously on his benignant face, and looked severely down upon the culprit.  The court-room shivered and Thompson’s round face grew perceptibly whiter; but his eyes, after a single glance darted at the Judge, never left the face of the man at the bar.

The next second the Judge began to speak, and Thompson, and the court-room with him, heaved a deep sigh of relief.

“Young man,” said the Judge, “you have committed an act of grievous impropriety.  You have been guilty of one of the most reprehensible offences that any citizen of a Commonwealth founded upon order and justice could commit, an act of such flagrant culpability that the Court, in the maintenance of its dignity and in the interest of the Commonwealth found it necessary to visit upon you punishment of great severity and incarcerate you in the gaol usually reserved for the most depraved malefactors.  Intemperance is one of the most debasing of vices.  It impairs the intellect and undermines the constitution.  To the inhibition of Holy Writ is added the cumulative if inferential prohibition of the Law, which declines to consider inebriety, though extreme enough in degree to impair if not destroy the reasoning faculty, in mitigation of crime of the highest ­ dignity.  If you had no beloved family to whom your conduct would be an affliction, yet you have a duty to yourself and to the Commonwealth which you have flagrantly violated.  To shocking inebriety you added the even grosser misdemeanor of disturbing a Court in the exercise of its supreme function:  the calm, orderly, and deliberate administration of justice between the citizens of the Commonwealth.”

“But, Judge ?” began the young man.

A sharp cough from the Sheriff interrupted him and he glanced at the Sheriff to meet a menacing shake of the head.

The strangeness of the scene and the impressive solemnity of the Judge so wrought upon the young man that he began to whimper.  He looked at the Judge and once more opened his mouth to speak, but the Sheriff, called, sharply: 

“Silence!”

Creel glanced appealingly from the Judge to the Sheriff, only to meet another imperative shake of the latter’s head and a warning scowl.  Then the Judge proceeded, in a tone that showed that he was not insensible to his altered manner.

“The Court, always mindful of that mercy whose quality ’is not strained, but droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath,’ trusts that your recent incarceration, though brief, may prove adequate to the exigencies of the occasion.  It hopes that the incarceration of one night in the common gaol may prove in case of a young man like yourself sufficiently efficacious to deter you from the repetition of so grave a misdemeanor, and at the same time not crush too much that generous spirit of youth which in its proper exercise may prove so advantageous to its possessor, and redound so much to the benefit of the Commonwealth.  The order of the Court, therefore, is that the Sheriff discharge you from further imprisonment.

“Mr. Sheriff, conduct the young man to the door, caution him against a recurrence of his offence, and direct him toward his home.

“We will now proceed to call the docket.”

The court-room with another gasp broke into a buzz, which was instantly quelled by the sharp command of the Sheriff for silence and order in the court.

“But, Judge ­” began Creel again, “I don’t understand ­”

What he did not understand was not heard, for Thompson seized the prisoner before he could finish his sentence, and, with a grip of steel on his arm, hustled him down the aisle and out of the court-room.

A good many persons poured out of the court-room after them and with subdued laughter followed the Sheriff and his charge across the green.  Thompson, however, did not wait for them.  The young man appeared inclined to argue.  But the Sheriff gave him no time.  Hurrying him down the walk, he unhitched his horse for him and ordered him to mount.

“But, Sheriff ­Mr. Thompson, I ’m darned if I understand what it is all about.”

“You were drunk,” said Thompson ­“flagrantly inebriated.  Go home.  Did n’t you hear the Judge?”

“Yes, I heard him.  He ’s doty.  I might have been drunk, but I ’m darned if I slept in jail last night ­I slept in ­”

“I ’m darned if you did n’t,” said the Sheriff.  “The Judge has ruled it so, and so you did.  Now go home and don’t you come back here again during this term, or you will sleep in jail again.”

“That old Judge is doty,” declared the young man with a tone of conviction.

“So much the worse for you if you come back here.  Go home now, just as quick as you can.”

Creel reflected for a moment.

“Well, it beats my time.  I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do, Mr. Thompson,” he said, half pleadingly.  “I ’ll go home and stay there if you will promise not to tell my wife I was in jail.”

“I promise you,” said Aleck, solemnly.  “I give you my word I won’t.”

“And what ’s more,” continued Creel, “if you ’ll keep anybody else from doing it, I ’ll vote for you next time for Sheriff.”

“I promise you that, too,” said Aleck, “and if anybody says you were there, let me know, and I ’ll come up there and ­and tell her you were n’t.  I can’t do any more than that, can I?”

“No, you can’t do any more than that,” admitted Creel, sadly, and, leaning over and shaking hands with the Sheriff cordially for the first time in some years, he rode away in profound dejection.

“Well, I ’ve got to face Mary,” he said, “and I reckon I might as well do it.  Whiskey is a queer thing.  I must have been a lot drunker than I thought I was, because if the Court had n’t ruled it, I would have sworn I slept in that there wing room last night.”

“Well, that ’s the best bluff I ever put up,” said Thompson to the throng about him as he turned back to the court-house.

The Sheriff’s bluff became the topic of the rest of the term.  Such audacity, such resourcefulness had never been known.  Thompson became more popular than ever, and his re-election the following spring was admitted to be certain.

“That Aleck Thompson ’s the smartest man that is,” declared one of his delighted adherents.

Thompson himself thought so, too, and his imitation of the Judge, of Dick Creel, and of himself in court became his most popular story.

Only the old Judge moved among the throng of tittering laymen calm, dignified, and unsuspecting.

“If ever he gets hold of you, Aleck,” said one of that worthy’s worshippers, “there ’s likely to be a vacancy in the office of sheriff.”

“He ’ll put me in jail,” laughed Aleck.  “Dick Creel says he ‘s kind o’ doty.”