As Redfield disappeared within, the Squire called after him, “Bring out my table, too, will you. We'll have the trial here.”
“That's all right as fer as it goes, Squire,” one of the crowd before the cabin called out, “but there ain't room enough for us up there.”
“Well,” the Squire answered, “you've got the whole State of Ohio down there. I reckon you can find room in it, if you stand close.”
He turned the joke on the crowd; which acquiesced with cheers. When Redfield returned with the large book and the small table he had been sent for, the Squire drew up to them and proclaimed silence in the Court. Then, “Who complains against this man? You, James Redfield?”
“I arrested him, but I don't complain of him more than the rest. You know what he's been doing in Leatherwood, as well as other places, for the last month or six weeks. We want his mischief stopped; we want to see what the law can do about it. We could have lynched him, but that ain't the right way, and so we all feel.”
“Well, we've got to make a start, somewhere,” the justice returned. “What's he accused of? What do you accuse him of?”
“Well, for one thing,” Redfield said, rather reluctantly, “he professes to be Almighty God.”
“And he is God, the Most High Jehovah, Maker of Heaven and Earth,” came in a varying cry, from the believers who had gathered increasingly on the skirts of their enemies.
Their voices seemed to put life and courage into the prisoner, who for the first time lifted his fallen face and looked at the justice with a light of hope in his dulled eyes.
“You hear that,” the old squire addressed him. “Is that your name? Are you God?”