Promptly on the stroke of three the judge tapped upon his desk with his pencil.

“Now, gentlemen, proceed with your case; and I must ask you to be as brief as possible.  I have an appointment at four which can not be postponed,” he said quietly; and Hawk threw down his paper and began at once.

Hunnicott heard his opponent’s argument mechanically, having his ear attuned for whistle signals and wheel drummings.  Hawk spoke rapidly and straight to his point, as befitted a man speaking to the facts and with no jury present to be swayed by oratorical effort.  When he came to the summarizing of the allegations in the amended petition, he did it wholly without heat, piling up the accusations one upon another with the careful method of a bricklayer building a wall.  The wall-building simile thrust itself upon Hunnicott with irresistible force as he listened.  If the special engine should not dash up in time to batter down the wall——­

Hawk closed as dispassionately as he had begun, and the judge bowed gravely in Hunnicott’s direction.  The local attorney got upon his feet, and as he began to speak a telegram was handed in.  It was Kent’s wire from Juniberg, beseeching him to gain time at all hazards, and he settled himself to the task.  For thirty dragging minutes he rang the changes on the various steps in the suit, knowing well that the fatal moment was approaching when—­Kent still failing him—­he would be compelled to submit his case without a scrap of an affidavit to support it.

The moment came, and still there was no encouraging whistle shriek from the dun plain beyond the open windows.  Hawk was visibly disgusted, and Judge MacFarlane was growing justly impatient.  Hunnicott began again, and the judge reproved him mildly.

“Much of what you are saying is entirely irrelevant, Mr. Hunnicott.  This hearing is on the plaintiff’s amended petition.”

No one knew better than the local attorney that he was wholly at the court’s mercy; that he had been so from the moment the judge began to consider his purely formal defense, entirely unsupported by affidavits or evidence of any kind.  None the less, he strung his denials out by every amplification he could devise, and, having fired his last shot, sat down in despairing breathlessness to hear the judge’s summing-up and decision.

Judge MacFarlane was mercifully brief.  On the part of the plaintiff there was an amended petition fully fortified by uncontroverted affidavits.  On the part of the defendant company there was nothing but a formal denial of the allegations.  The duty of the court in the premises was clear.  The prayer of the plaintiff was granted, the temporary relief asked for was given, and the order of the court would issue accordingly.

The judge was rising when the still, hot air of the room began to vibrate with the tremulous thunder of the sound for which Hunnicott had been so long straining his ears.  He was the first of the three to hear it, and he hurried out ahead of the others.  At the foot of the stair he ran blindly against Kent, dusty, travel-worn and haggard.