To such a tale the judge of the Louisville Juvenile Court was listening now, and the defendant, who sat sullen eyed in the essential wickedness of his eleven years, heard witness after witness unfold his record of misdoing. He and his vassal desperadoes, it was averred, broke windows and street light globes, preyed upon the apple barrels of the corner grocery, and used language that scalded and sullied the virginal ears of passing wash-ladies and plumber-gentlemen.
"There can't nobody live in peace in them two blocks, Judge, your Honour," came the heated asseveration of the man in the witness chair. "He's got more influence over my boys than what I've got myself—and the Reform School's the only place for the likes of him."
"Where do you spend your Saturday nights?" inquired the personage on the bench irrelevantly, and the furtive eyes of the witness shifted and lost their self-assurance.
"Here and there, Judge, your Honour. Sometimes I drop in at Mike's place for a glass of common beer."
"Do you occasionally send your boys—the followers of this dangerous bandit—to Mike's place with a bucket?"
The man hesitated, and his glance savoured of repressed truculence. "Maybe I do, once in a while," he replied doggedly. "I ain't on trial here, am I?"
"No—not just now." The judge spoke almost gently. "Stand down and let the fellow who is on trial take that chair."
The child with the sullen face slouched forward, and the Judge's eyes engaged his smouldering young pupil's with less austerity perhaps than the description of his turpitude warranted. This man, who sat one day a week to try the cases of delinquent and incorrigible children, presided five days over more mature hearings. From Monday through Thursday he mantled himself in judicial dignity and his language was the decorous speech of the bench. One who observed him only on Friday would hardly have gathered that. Just now he leaned forward and addressed the boy in a conversational tone and an argot that savoured of the alley-playground.
"Willie, haven't you got any other name—I mean amongst those kids that belong to your gang?"
Willie swallowed hard, but inasmuch as he failed to reply, his inquisitor went on: