“Ain’t he right?” cried Mr. Arp.

“I don’t say he ain’t.”  Squire Buckalew cast a glance at Mr. Brown, the clerk, and, perceiving that he was listening, added, “The Judge always is right!”

“Yes, sir!” said Colonel Flitcroft.

“I can’t stand up for Joe Louden to any extent, but I don’t think he done wrong,” Buckalew went on, recovering, “when he paid this man Fear’s fine.”

“You don’t!” exclaimed Mr. Arp.  “Why, haven’t you got gumption enough to see—­”

“Look here, Eskew,” interposed his antagonist.  “How many friends have you got that hate to hear folks talk bad about you?”

“Not a one!” For once Eskew’s guard was down, and his consistency led him to destruction.  “Not a one!  It ain’t in human nature.  They’re bound to enjoy it!”

“Got any friends that would fight for you?”

Eskew walked straight into this hideous trap.  “No!  There ain’t a dozen men ever lived that had!  Caesar was a popular man, but he didn’t have a soul to help him when the crowd lit on him, and I’ll bet old Mark Antony was mighty glad they got him out in the yard before it happened,—­ he wouldn’t have lifted a finger without a gang behind him!  Why, all Peter himself could do was to cut off an ear that wasn’t no use to anybody.  What are you tryin’ to get at?”

The Squire had him; and paused, and stroked his chin, to make the ruin complete.  “Then I reckon you’ll have to admit,” he murmured, “that, while I ain’t defendin’ Joe Louden’s character, it was kind of proper for him to stand by a feller that wouldn’t hear nothin’ against him, and fought for him as soon as he did hear it!”

Eskew Arp rose from his chair and left the hotel.  It was the only morning in all the days of the conclave when he was the first to leave.

Squire Buckalew looked after the retreating figure, total triumph shining brazenly from his spectacles.  “I expect,” he explained, modestly, to the others,—­“I expect I don’t think any more of Joe Louden than he does, and I’ll be glad when Canaan sees the last of him for good; but sometimes the temptation to argue with Eskew does lead me on to kind of git the better of him.”

When Happy Fear had suffered—­with a give-and-take simplicity of patience—­his allotment of months in durance, and was released and sent into the streets and sunshine once more, he knew that his first duty lay in the direction of a general apology to Joe.  But the young man was no longer at Beaver Beach; the red-bearded proprietor dwelt alone there, and, receiving Happy with scorn and pity, directed him to retrace his footsteps to the town.