“That's my sandy little pardner,” said Judge Priest; and he put his hands under Tony's arms and heaved the child back up on his shoulders, and swung himself about so that he and Tony faced the huddle of silent figures in the shadow of the bank.
“You see all them men yonder, don't you, boy?” he prompted. “Well, now you speak up ez loud ez you can, and you tell 'em whut I've been tellin' you to say all the way down the street ever since we left your mammy. You tell 'em I'm the big judge of the big court. Tell 'em there's one man among 'em who must come on and go with me. He'll know and they'll know which man I mean. Tell 'em that man ain't goin' to be hurt ef he comes now. Tell 'em that they ain't none of 'em goin' to be hurt ef they all do what I say. Tell 'em Father Minor is here to show 'em to a safe, warm place where they kin spend the night. Kin you remember all that, sonny-boy? Then tell 'em in Eyetalian—quick and loud.”
And Tony Wolfe Tone told them. Unmindful of the hundreds of eyes that were upon him, even forgetting for a minute to watch the fire—Tony opened wide his small mouth and in the tongue of his father's people, richened perhaps by the sweet brogue of his mother's land, and spiced here and there with a word or two of savoury good American slang, he gave the message a piping utterance.
They hearkened and they understood. This baby, this bambino, speaking to them in a polyglot tongue they, nevertheless, could make out—surely he did not lie to them! And the priest of their own faith, standing in the snow close by the child, would not betray them. They knew better than that. Perhaps to them the flag, the drum, the fife, the bugle, the faint semblance of military formation maintained by these volunteer rescuers who had appeared so opportunely, promising succour and security and a habitation for the night—perhaps all this symbolised to them organised authority and organised protection, just as Judge Priest, in a flash of inspiration back in Kamleiter's Hall, had guessed that it might.
Their leader, the man who held the pistol, advanced a pace or two and called out something; and when Tony Wolfe, from his perch on the old judge's shoulders, had answered back, the man, as though satisfied, turned and might be seen busily confabbing with certain of his mates who clustered about him, gesticulating.
“Whut did he say, boy?” asked Judge Priest, craning his neck to look up.
“He say, Mister Judge, they wants to talk it over,” replied Tony, craning his neck to look down.
“And whut did you say to him then?”
“I say to him: 'Go to it, kiddo!'”
In the sheltering crotch of little Tony's two plump bestraddling legs, which encircled his neck, the old judge chuckled to himself. A wave of laughter ran through the ranks of the halted mob—Tony's voice had carried so far as that, and Tony's mode of speech apparently had met with favour. Mob psychology, according to some students, is hard to fathom; according to others, easy.