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 all were waiting for the judge and his galaxy of legal lights.

Ed Rankin, a young ranchman from over beyond Emmaville, finding himself among strangers, and being as shy as a coyote, turned in at the court-house door, and was making his way toward the big air-tight stove, when he observed that the room was not empty, as he supposed it would be. In a remote corner sat a sorry-looking group, a woman and three children, their shrinking figures thinly clad, their eyes, red with crying or exposure, glancing apprehensively from side to side. The youngest of the group was a boy of ten; he, like all the others, had the look of a hunted creature.

Rankin walked across the room, his footsteps muffled by the sawdust with which the floor was plentifully strewn. Yet, soft as his tread was, the four shivering creatures were visibly startled by it. The young ranchman passed within "the bar" and stood with his back to the stove. He tried to whistle, but he could not do it. He looked about the room, seeking some object to divert his thoughts. Bare walls and rows of empty benches outside the bar; within that mystic boundary all the usual furnishings of the immediate precincts of justice.