For Sard, poor child, knew that the chief issue, the chief point of all the struggle would be missed. How the trial of Terry O'Brien would be turned by the countryside merely into a compliment for itself! How it would be said that Watts Shipman, the great continental lawyer, had been so impressed by the splendid and inexorable quality of the Trout County Justice, that he had tried one of its most sensational cases himself! How the little country paper would gloat over the thing and fairly tumble over its type as it abandoned its usual clipped stories and boiler press jokes about the mother-in-law, the old maid, the unwelcome twins and the absent husband to flare into three sticks of local felicitations! Veritas, Uncle Felix and E Pluribus Unum would write their usual letters. The Grand Old Man of the town would make a speech and everything he said would later be corrected and contradicted by the three Grand Old Women.
The Roman Holiday furnished by Terry's ruined life would obtain, but there would be no sober effort for the understanding and education of future Terrys.
On the way home Sard and her father drove in silence.
The country roads were leafy tunnels through which the lights of their automobile rayed mysteriously. Owls and bats whirred away from them, mists arose from the flats or filtered through the woods. The Judge held his portfolio of carefully fitted papers. In the dusk Sard saw him heavy, immovable, his cigar in the corner of his mouth. Once or twice he turned to his daughter as if expecting her comment on the day's events. But there was no talk between them and the Judge's face grew harder.
As they entered the drive he waved toward the garage. There gleamed no patch of orange-colored light in the window of the room above; the girl's heart suddenly stood still. As she took her hands from the wheel they trembled.
Again the Judge pointed to the garage. "Leave the car here, don't drive it around; a new man will wash the cars to-morrow. I dismissed Colter this morning."
The Judge did not get down from the car, but sat there smoking and turning his cigar. His gray lips closing on it seemed to be the only thing the girl could look at; she could not look as far as his eyes and the Judge knew that her face became slowly and suffocatingly a scarlet consciousness. He gave a short grunt.
"Exactly; you're not to see him again," he said. Then, "I all but kicked that fellow off the place." As the wild tears rushed to the young eyes: "It's your own behavior, young lady. I've never limited you nor held you back," the Judge said grimly. "I thought you were a lady; I thought you lived under the right laws."
Under the laws——!
Her father did not move from beside her in the seat and Sard dared not press by him out of the driver's seat. She sat, her straight figure dilating, her hands clenched, the red stain on her face seeming to burn down into her body and to make another sort of woman of her—What sort? She could see what sort her father thought she was. The piteous eyes were dense with shame.