A constable would have interfered. The Collector swung round on him.

"You are taking her back to the Court-house? Well, I have business
there too. Where is your Court-house?"

The constable pointed.

"Up the road? I am obliged to you. Drive on, if you please."



Chapter X.


THE BENCH.


The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one
another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples.
To-day--for the fall of the leaf was at hand--these maples flamed with
hectic yellows and scarlets; and indeed thousands of leaves, stripped by
the recent gales, already strewed the cross-walks and carpeted the
ground about the benches disposed in the shade--pleasant seats to which,
of an empty afternoon, wives brought their knitting and gossiped while
their small children played within sight; haunts, later in the day, of
youths who whittled sticks or carved out names with jack-knives--ancient
solace of the love-stricken; rarely thronged save when some transgressor
was brought to the stocks or the whipping-post.

These instruments of public discipline stood on the northern side of the