Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/56

 tickled Rainbow’s humor and it laughed nervously. A deputy rapped for order.

“Pilk’ hain’t one to git venturesome,” whispered Lafe Fitch, Rainbow’s omnibus driver. “Notwithstandin’, he's a brave man—Pilk’ is. Now, jest supposin’ that desprit criminal took it into his head to run. Jest supposin’! With Pilk’ hitched onto him with a handcuff. Seems like Pilk’ ’ud git drug over half the county ’fore his arm pulled clean out of the socket.”

The business of selecting a jury in a trial for murder is not one which is commonly finished with expedition; in this case it was completed with what seemed to the spectators undue and reprehensible haste. Not only did the assemblage consider that young Browning was slighting his client’s interests, but, what was more important, cheating their own curiosity. They wanted things done in order with nothing omitted; and, least of all did they desire to have omitted searching scrutiny into the private lives of such of their neighbors as were on the panel. But Browning took only the most cursory interest in the jury. It is true he made two challenges, both peremptory, but these, as he explained later, were matters of personal prejudice, one victim being cross-eyed and the other afflicted with such a twitching of the left cheek as would have fascinated the young lawyer and distracted his