“It was a farmer, name of Bowlder,” added Mr. Willetts. “His son Hartley's drinking again, and there ain't any one but Harkless can do anything with him. You let him tackle a sick man to nurse, or a tipsy one to handle, and I tell you,” Mr. Willetts went on with enthusiasm, “he is at home. It beats me,—and lots of people don't think college does a man any good! Why, the way he cured old Fis——”
“See!” cried Minnie, loudly, pointing out of the window. “Look down there. Something's happened.”
There was a swirl in the crowd below. Men were running around a corner of the court-house, and the women and children were harking after. They went so fast, and there were so many of them, that immediately that whole portion of the yard became a pushing, tugging, pulling, squirming jam of people.
“It's on the other side,” said Lige. “We can see from the hall window. Come quick, before these other folks fill it up.”
They followed him across the building, and looked down on an agitated swarm of faces. Five men were standing on the entrance steps to the door below, and the crowd was thickly massed beyond, leaving a little semicircle clear about the steps. Those behind struggled to get closer, and leaped in the air to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Harkless stood alone on the top step, his hand resting on the shoulder of the pale and contrite and sobered Hartley. In the clear space, Jim Bardlock was standing with sheepishly hanging head, and between him and Harkless were the two gamblers of the walnut shells. The journalist held in his hand the implements of their profession.
“Give it all up,” he was saying in his steady voice. “You've taken eighty-six dollars from this boy. Hand it over.”
The men began to edge closer to the crowd, giving little, swift, desperate, searching looks from left to right, and right to left, moving nervously about, like weasels in a trap. “Close up there tight,” said Harkless, sharply. “Don't let them out.”
“W'y can't we git no square treatment here?” one of the gamblers whined; but his eyes, blazing with rage, belied the plaintive passivity of his tone. “We been running no skin. Wy d'ye say we gotter give up our own money? You gotter prove it was a skin. We risked our money fair.”
“Prove it! Come up here, Eph Watts. Friends,” the editor turned to the crowd, smiling, “friends, here's a man we ran out of town once, because he knew too much about things of this sort. He's come back to us again and he's here to stay. He'll give us an object-lesson on the shell game.”
“It's pretty simple,” remarked Mr. Watts. “The best way is to pick up the ball with your second finger and the back part of your thumb as you pretend to lay the shell down over it: this way.” He illustrated, and showed several methods of manipulation, with professional sang-froid; and as he made plain the easy swindle by which many had been duped that morning, there arose an angry and threatening murmur.