"If the Court will excuse us for a brief moment of recess," said he savagely, "I should like to ask the privilege of a brief personal consultation with the attorney for the defense. If he will retire with me for just a moment I'll make him eat his words! After that we can better shape these proceedings."
The blue eye that Hod Brooks turned upon his opponent was calmly inquiring, but wholly fearless. On the other hand, some sudden idea seemed to strike him now. He resolved to change his tactics. He was shrewd enough to know that, irritated beyond a certain point, Henderson would fight his case hard; and Hod Brooks did not want to lose this case.
Henderson, with a little wave of the hand, his face livid in anger, edged away from the table of the Justice of the Peace. Hod Brooks followed him out into the hall.
"Order in the court!" intoned the Justice yet again. There was a rush toward the door. "There now, go back, men," said Hod Brooks, raising a hand. "There's not going to be any fight. Let us two alone—we want to talk, that's all."
Don Lane looked steadily at the face of Justice Blackman. Aurora Lane stared ahead, still icy pale, her hand clasped in that of Miss Julia's. She felt, rather than saw, the gazes of all these others boring into her very soul. Here were her enemies—here in what had been her home. It seemed an hour to her before at length those standing about the door shuffled apart to allow the two forensic enemies to reënter, though really it had not been above ten minutes. Neither man bore any traces of personal combat. The face of Judge Henderson was a shade triumphant—strangely enough, since now he was to admit his own defeat.
"I tell you, I heard the whole business," said old Silas later on to his crony, who owned to a certain defect in one ear in hot weather such as this. "I heard the whole business. There wasn't no fight at all—not that neither of them seemed a bit a-scared. Hod, he raises a hand, and that made the Judge slow down.
"'It's what you might expect, Judge,' says Hod, for appearing in a measly little justice court case.' He's got a mighty nasty way of smiling, Hod has. But scared? No. Not none.
"'I'll fight this case as long as you like,' says the Judge, 'and I'll win it, too.'
"'Maybe, maybe, Judge,' says Hod. 'But they's more ways than one of skinning a cat. Suppose you do win it, what've you won? It's all plumb wrong anyhow, and it orto be stopped. These people all orto go on home.'