“Do I have to go in there?” he asked hopelessly.
“Yes, ye do!” snapped Constable Wolff. In fact he was just a little bit ashamed to be locking up a boy, but he did not want to give in before his official companion, and, probably Constable Walker felt the same way. If both of them had been a little kinder, and not so insistent on doing their duty to the very limit, Dan could have remained in an outer room.
As it was they thrust him into a cell, clanged the heavy door shut, and locked it.
Dan sank on the cot bed in the steel-barred cage. The footsteps of the constables echoed away down the hall, and the boy was left alone in the jail.
CHAPTER XIII
BEFORE THE SQUIRE
Timothy Perkfell was a justice of the peace in Hayden. He was called Squire by nearly every one. The title meant a good deal to Mr. Perkfell, and he would have felt insulted had any one omitted it when speaking to him. That is unless he was called “Judge,” which he liked better than “Squire.”
The Squire’s office was in a small room back of Hank Lee’s grocery store, and could be entered from there. It was a good sized room, for occasionally, trials for minor offences were held there. There were a number of chairs, a big stove, a picture of General Washington and another of the Governor on the wall. The Squire usually sat at a big desk, behind a row of law books.
It needed but a glance to tell that the volumes were law books, because they looked so uninteresting. They were bound in leather, and, on the backs, were such titles as “Hampersmith on Contracts,” “Vroom XLIV,” “Corbin’s Forms,” etc. The books were always very dusty, which would seem to indicate that they were seldom used, and this was the case, for Squire Perkfell knew very little about law, and certainly not enough to understand the contents of the big books.
Still it made a good impression to have them on his desk, and whenever he was in doubt how to decide a case he would take up one of the volumes, dust it carefully, pretend to hunt through it for a decision, and then say something like this:
“Ahem! I have listened to the learned counsel on both sides, and, on consulting Blackstone in the celebrated case of Nottingham versus Snagdeck, I find that there is very much similar in this action. Blackstone expressed my ideas fully. I therefore find—” and he would announce his decision.