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Abner whirled as if stung and saw a familiar figure at whom he stared for several seconds before recognizing Mr. Ditmas; then he repeated, "Glad to see I ain't in it?"

"Yes, very glad."

Abner looked at Mr. Ditmas, rather relieved to take his eyes off the thing.

"How do you know I wasn't in it?" he asked with a certain penetration.

"If you had been in it you would have run off with the others."

"Yeh, that's so, I guess—but now a jury would say I he'ped do it if they found me stan'in' here."

Ditmas glanced at the youth more sharply, seeking to fathom this extraordinary thought.

"Possibly—a jury's notions are more or less mechanical, a certain notion for a certain situation—funny thing, a jury, take 'em one at a time, each man seems to have ordinary sense, put 'em together and you've got twelve dam fools—but how came you to think of that at all?"

"I—don't know."

The teamster looked so stupid and stodgy standing there by the figure, the engineer gave up his questioning and fell into another line of thought. He said, more to himself than to Abner, "I wonder what period of human development this throws back to? Almost every grade and condition of man has some sort of form they go through with before executing one of their members. The American Indians held elaborate pow wows; African tribes possessed genuine courts; in the Fijis executions were the subject of religious ceremonials and ended by making a feast off the corpse. . . ."

"The people here do this," said Abner, proffering the usual village explanation, "because the law won't do nothin' to nobody."

"Certainly, that's the queer part; the law seems to function in Africa, in the Fijis, in every other place on the globe at least enough for the people to have confidence in it and depend on it, but down here in the South there seems to be no