The crowd at the farther corner of the square broke apart before long.
"By jinks! Silas," said old Aaron to his friend, "who'd a thought it? I've seen some fights, but that was the shortest I ever did see. And he made old Eph Adamson holler 'enough!' By criminy! he done that very thing. Looks to me, safest thing right is not to talk too much about 'Rory Lane!"
Don Lane emerged from the thick of the crowd, his coat over his arm, his face pale in anger, his eye seeking any other champion who might oppose him.
"Listen to me now, you people!" he said. "If there's another one of you that ever does what that man there has done, or says what he said, he'll get the same he did, or worse. You hear me, now—I'll thrash the life out of any man that raises his voice against anyone of my family. You hear me, now?"
He cast a straight and steady gaze upon Old Man Tarbush, who stood irresolute.
"No, you'll not arrest me again," said he. "You know you won't. You'll leave me alone. If you don't, you'll be the next. I don't love you any too well the way it is.
"Get out now, all of you—you most of all," he added, and gave Marshal Tarbush a contemptuous shove as he elbowed his own way on out of the crowd.
Old Hod Brooks passed on down the street and took the opposite side of the public square, paying no attention to all this. He ambled on until he found his own office at length. A half hour later he might have been seen in his customary attitude, slouched deep down into his chair, his head sunk between his shoulders, his feet propped up on the table, and his eyes bent on the pages of a volume of the law.
He had in his lap now no less an authority than "Chitty on Pleadings." He had sat there for some moments—and he had not seen a word on all the page.