"This is intolerable! Do you mean to insult the court, sir? Do you mean to profane this sacred temple of justice with untimely levity? Take your hat off, sir, or I will fine you for contempt. Do you hear me?"
"Well, it's very hard that I can't say a word by way of ex—"
"This is too much," said the judge, warmly—"this is just a little too much. Perhaps you'd like to come up on the bench here and run the court and sentence a few convicts? Mr. Clerk, fine that man fifty dollars. Now, sir, remove your hat."
"Judge, this is rough on me. I——"
"Won't do it yet?" said the judge, furiously. "Why, you impudent scoundrel, I've a notion to—Mr. Clerk, fine him one hundred dollars more, and, Mr. Jones, you go and take that hat off by force."
Then the tipstaff approached Mix, who was by this time half crazy with wrath, and hit the hat with his stick. It did not move. Then he struck it again and caved in the crown, but it still remained on Mix's head. Then he picked up a volume of Brown On Evidence, and mashed the crown in flat. Then Mix sprang at him; and shaking his fist under the nose of Jones, he shrieked,
"You miserable scullion, I've half a notion to kill you! If that jackass on the bench had any sense, he could see that the hat is glued fast. I can't take it off if I wanted to, and I wouldn't take it off now if I could."
[Illustration: A COURT SCENE]
Then the judge removed the fines and excused him, and Mix went home. He slept in his hat for a week; and even when it came off, the top of his head looked as black as if mortification had set in.
But if the judge is too particular, our sheriff is hardly careful enough. The manner in which he permits our jail to be conducted always seemed to me interesting and original.