There were several passers before another half-hour had elapsed.

The trousers kicked out quite hilariously when a young couple drove by
in a buggy. The girl was pretty, and companionship with her might have
suited even a judge's garments. But the young man and the girl were
quite absorbed in each other, and the trousers kicked and the frock-coat
flirted ineffectually.

A peddler's cart passed very slowly, but the driver did not look up from
a paper filled with figures.

There were others to whom the judge's garments offered themselves
mutely, but no one glanced that way and the clock was discreetly silent.
The breeze died down and the trousers and the coat hung with a sort of
homeless, homesick, and wistful air. One might have thought they were
trying to conceal themselves when the next person appeared, so still
were they. He was not an inviting person--not such a new lord and master
as a judge's garments might be expected to welcome.

He was grossly fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging
waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap
was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon
his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable. Surely, a
most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments
of a judge! But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of
inanimate things, the clock jangled its alarm.

The tramp--there was no mistaking that gait and that general air of the
vagrant--snapped himself about, located the noise, stared at the post,