Hammer was a forerunner of the type of lawyer so common in our centers of population today, such as one sees chasing ambulances through the streets with a business-card in one hand and a contract in the other; such as arrives at the scene of wreck, fire, and accident along with the undertaker, and always ahead of the doctors and police.
Hammer had his nose in the wind the minute that Constable Frost came into town with his prisoner. Before Joe had been in jail an hour he had engaged himself to defend that unsophisticated youngster, and had drawn from him an order on Mrs. Newbolt for twenty-five dollars. He had demanded fifty as his retainer, but Joe knew that his mother had but twenty-five dollars saved out of his wages, and no more. He would not budge a cent beyond that amount.
So, as Mrs. Newbolt and Colonel Price approached the jail that morning, they beheld the sheriff and Lawyer Hammer coming down the steps of the county prison, and between them Joe, like _Eugene Aram_, "with gyves upon his wrists." The sheriff was taking Joe out to arraign him before the circuit judge to plead to the indictment.
The court convened in that same building where all the county's business was centered, and there was no necessity for taking the prisoner out through one door and in at another, for there was a passage from cells to court-rooms. But if he had taken Joe that way, the sheriff would have lost a seldom-presented opportunity of showing himself on the streets in charge of a prisoner accused of homicide, to say nothing of the grand opening for the use of his ancient wrist-irons.
Lawyer Hammer also enjoyed his distinction in that short march. He leaned over and whispered in his client's ear, so that there would be no doubt left in the public understanding of his relations to the prisoner, and he took Joe's arm and added his physical support to his legal as they descended the steps.
Mrs. Newbolt was painfully shocked by the sight of the irons on Joe's wrists. She groaned as if they clamped the flesh of her own.
"Oh, they didn't need to do that," she moaned.
Joe doubtless heard her, for he lifted his face and ran his eyes through the crowd which had gathered. When he found her he smiled. That was the first look Colonel Price ever had taken into the lad's face.