Minga and Dunstan leaped from their seats and fled forth under the trees. Minga's small face was pale. She stood staring unseeingly at the crowds straggling out of the little country court-house of Trout County.
People were already settling down with lunch boxes or hurrying away to eat before the jury should return. It was prophesied from mouth to mouth that the jury would not be "out" long. Groups standing about discussed the case with relish. The comments were bald, stereotyped and pharisaical. The tiresome, assumed impeccability of this crowd discussing one boy's misdoings got on Minga's nerves. Who were these people, some of them mean of face, too evidently underhand, tricky and foul-mouthed, to condemn a boy, only twenty, who had had them for example and no mature chance to estimate the essential stuff of life?
The girl, with unreasoning resentment and little understanding of the enormous values of the collective sense of equity, watched Judge Bogart with slow pomp, making formal gestures of greeting and dismissal. She saw the two lawyers exchanging deprecating amenities, and wanted to laugh. What a play it all was! What mummery!
She watched Sard talking to Shipman and her heart was hot with rage as the two exchanged what seemed to her inadequate remarks.
"How's Winged Victory?"
Sard's hands went eagerly out.
"I'm still thinking of your speech. It's what I've always wanted to say—to have said."
"You didn't exact more pyrotechnics!" He met her glance quizzically.
"Ah," the girl breathed, "you spoke to their intelligences, not to their emotions. You made people think!"
"Did I?" Smiling doubtfully.