The judge turned to the crowd, and spoke in a tone of excessive civility.  “Just a word, gentlemen!—­the sheriff is right; it is your court-house and you should not be kept out of it.  No doubt there are some of you whose presence in this building will sooner or later be urgently desired.  We are going to let all who wish to enter, but I beg you to remember that there will be five men inside whose prejudices are all in favor of law and order.”  He pushed past Hues and entered the court-house, followed by Yancy and Hannibal.  “We’ll let ’em in where I can talk to ’em,” he said almost gaily.  “Besides, they’ll come in anyhow when they get ready, so there’s no sense in exciting them.”

In the court-house, Murrell, bound hand and foot, was seated between Carrington and the Earl of Lambeth in the little railed-off space below the judge’s bench.  Fear and suffering had blanched his unshaven cheeks and given a wild light to his deeply sunken eyes.  At sight of Yancy a smothered exclamation broke from his lips, he had supposed this man dead these many months!

Hues had abandoned his post and the crowd, suddenly grown clamorous, stormed the narrow entrance.  One of the doors, borne from its hinges, went down with a crash.  The judge, a fierce light flashing from his eyes, turned to Yancy.

“No matter what happens, this fellow Murrell is not to escape—­if he calls on his friends to rescue him he is to be shot!”

The hall was filling with swearing, struggling men, the floor shook beneath their heavy tread; then they burst into the court-room and saluted Murrell with a great shout.  But Murrell, bound, in rags, and silent, his lips frozen in a wolfish grin, was a depressing sight, and the boldest felt something of his unrestrained lawlessness go from him.

Less noisy now, the crowd spread itself out among the benches or swarmed up into the tiny gallery at the back of the building.  Man after man had hurried forward, intent on passing beyond the railing, but each lead encountered the judge, formidable and forbidding, and had turned aside.  Gradually the many pairs of eyes roving over the little group surrounding the outlaw focussed themselves on Slocum Price.  It was in unconscious recognition of that moral force which was his, a tribute to the grim dignity of his unshaken courage; what he would do seemed worth considering.

He was charmed to hear his name pass in a whisper from lip to lip.  Well, it was time they knew him!  He squared his ponderous shoulders and made a gesture commanding silence.  Battered, shabby and debauched, he was like some old war horse who sniffs the odor of battle that the wind incontinently brings to his nostrils.

“Don’t let him speak!” cried a voice, and a tumult succeeded.

Cool and indomitable the judge waited for it to subside.  He saw that the color was stealing back into Murrell’s face.  The outlaw was feeling that he was a leader not overthrown, these were his friends and followers, his safety was their safety too.  In a lull in the storm of sound the judge attempted to make himself heard, but his words were lost in the angry roar that descended on him.