“He ain’t here!” exclaimed the old man, impatiently.
But just as Jack, keenly watching everything, began to hope that some advantage to him might grow out of the absence of the magistrate, Sellick exclaimed, “There he is, over the way! He sees us.”
On the opposite corner was a country store and forwarding-house, with one side on the street and the other on the canal; from the door of which Jack saw a short-legged man hurrying towards them across the way. He mounted the stairs, passed Jack and the constable, and unlocked with a key from his pocket the door which Peternot had been shaking. As he led the way into the office, Jack, who noticed everything, noticed that the key was left sticking in the lock on the outside.
“Good morning. Walk in, gentlemen,” said the judge. And, seating himself before a sloping desk placed on a common pine table, he laid off his hat, exposing a big, bald head, adorned by a couple of light tufts of gray hair over the ears, and put on a pair of steel-bowed glasses, covering a pair of very light-colored and very weak eyes, which had a habit of winking constantly.
“A case of breaking and entering,” said Peternot, introducing the business. “As ’twas my house that was robbed, and as I am the complainant, I thought it best to have the prisoner brought before you.”
The judge winked many times at Jack through his glimmering glasses, examined Sellick’s warrant, winking hard over that too, and prepared to write. By this time several village loungers, with their usual keen scent for a criminal case, began to throng the room.
Peternot, being sworn, stated circumstantially how, on the previous evening, he had been interrupted during prayer-time by burglars breaking into his house, and had caught one by the heels as he was leaping from a window, and so forth. The bundle of clothes left behind was displayed; and Jack’s legs were about to undergo examination, when he saved the court that trouble by frankly confessing himself the person who had been caught.
“The clothes have been identified by the Chatfords,” said the squire. “They will also, if necessary, be sworn to by them, when the case comes up for trial. So any further evidence with regard to them might be dispensed with, since he has confessed his crime; though I told the deacon he might be wanted here as a witness, and I’m expectin’ him every minute. My nephew will corroborate my testimony.”
“Very well, as a mere formality; though your testimony is sufficient.”
Byron Dinks having given his evidence, in the presence of an ever-increasing crowd of spectators, the judge turned to Jack, winking extraordinarily hard at him, and said, “The complaint against you, I suppose you are aware, is of a very grave character. Is there any statement you wish to make?”