CHAPTER FOUR
Judge Winterhouse emerged from his private room and mounted the bench, a dignified figure of habits and dress belonging rather to the early, leisurely eighties than to the generation of which he remained a part. He wore a Prince Albert. His shining collar was affixed to an equally shining shirt by a gold collar button, and it was only when he turned his head at an acute angle that you perceived that his white beard made unnecessary a cravat. He wore that mantle of preoccupation which is one of the trappings detaching the bench from the ordinary run of mankind.
A hush fell upon the crowded courtroom, and upon the unfortunates who pressed about the doors and thronged the corridors because of lack of seating capacity within. Rainbow was present en masse with its environs and even its remoter farming districts. Only on the Fourth of July or on Farmer’s Day were so many equipages aligned under Rainbow’s maple trees, for no incident in the village’s history had so stirred it as this trial of the miscreant who had shot down
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