“I’ll have to get on somehow without your advice, thank you sir, Mr. Hammer, when it comes to how much to say,” said Joe.
“There’s not many lawyers–and I’ll tell you that right now in a perfectly plain and friendly way–that’d go ahead with your case under the conditions,” said Hammer. “But as I told you, I’ll stick to you and see you through. I wash my hands of any blame for the case, Joe, if it don’t turn out exactly the way you expect.”
Joe saw him leave without regret, for Hammer’s insistence seemed to him inexcusably vulgar. All men could not be like him, reflected Joe, his hope leaping forward to Judge Maxwell, whom he must soon confront.
Joe tossed the night through with his longing for Alice, 236 which gnawed him like hunger and would not yield to sleep, for in his dreams his heart went out after her; he heard her voice caressing his name. He woke with the feeling that he must put the thought of Alice away from him, and frame in his mind what he should say when it came his turn to stand before Judge Maxwell and tell his story. If by some hinted thing, some shade of speech, some qualification which a gentleman would grasp and understand, he might convey his reason to the judge, he felt that he must come clear.
He pondered it a long time, and the face of the judge rose before him, and the eyes were brown and the hair in soft wavelets above a white forehead, and Alice stood in judgment over him. So it always ended; it was before Alice that he must plead and justify himself. She was his judge, his jury, and his world.
It was mid-afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt arrived for her last visit before the trial. She came down to his door in her somber dress, tall, bony and severe, thinner of face herself than she had been before, her eyes bright with the affection for her boy which her tongue never put into words. Her shoes were muddy, and the hem of her skirt draggled, for, high as she had held it in her heavy tramp, it had become splashed by the pools in the soft highway.
“Mother, you shouldn’t have come today over the bad roads,” said Joe with affectionate reproof.
“Lands, what’s a little mud!” said she, putting down a small bundle which she bore. “Well, it’ll be froze up by tomorrow, I reckon, it’s turnin’ sharp and cold.”
She looked at Joe anxiously, every shadow in his worn face carving its counterpart in her heart. There was no smile of gladness on her lips, for smiles had been so long apart from her life that the nerves which commanded them had grown stiff and hard.
“Yes,” said Joe, taking up her last words, “winter will 237 be here in a little while now. I’ll be out then, Mother, to lay in wood for you. It won’t be long now.”