is laid by the prosecution upon the fact, if it is a fact, that the prisoner at the bar does not give you his true name. They imply that he is an adventurer, a man whose antecedents will weigh him down if he presents them. They say, he dares not tell the truth about himself, or he would tell it, to save him from the gallows. I will tell them something that he dares do; he dares risk the gallows rather than stain, even by an accusation of crime, the honored name he bears. For some youthful folly, some petulance of home-control, he comes to America, and, in his new-born independence, he drops the surname by which he would be identified, and is known by his baptismal name alone.

"That was an unwise thing to do; don't let your boys ever do it! It's all very well if nothing happens, but if it does, see the scrape it gets one in. It looks badly. I acknowledge it. I have pleaded with my client to disclose his family name. I might have as well have pleaded with Plymouth Rock. If I perish, I perish.' I like the generous surrender of himself to the consequences of his boyish folly, but, professionally, I strongly disapprove. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre.' He sees in fancy the agony and dismay of mother, sister, father, when the cruel news is brought; he thinks of the distance, of the long days of suspense before the end is reached; he will not bring such sorrow into the home he never should have left; they shall never know he was accused of murder; that he stood at the bar of justice, to plead for life; that he dragged down a hitherto unsullied name into the slime of criminals and prisons.

"Gentlemen, we many of us have sons. I have a boy, God bless him! now going through the fire of early

college life. I believe he is a good boy; I believe he will be the stay and support of his mother and sisters when I am dead and gone. But for all that, I wouldn't guarantee that he'll keep free of folly and entanglement while he is in his fiery, foolish years. I've paid some of his debts for him already. I am afraid I shall have to pay Some more. It isn't even on the books that he mayn't some day take the bit between his teeth, and walk off across the ocean with only the formality of his middle name. If he does, and gets into a scrape, though he's a good fellow, I sha'n't expect him to show the pluck that this young fellow shows, and refuse to appeal to me. I'm sure he'd send a speedy telegram across the ocean, and call upon me to get him out of his entanglement. It would be the wisest way, though perhaps not the most heroic.

"Gentlemen, we have all been young; let us not be hard upon the faults of youth. Let us show the indulgence to this young stranger that we would have asked for ourselves; that we would ask for our sons, if they should ever, by complicated imprudence and misfortune, fall into the strait that he has fallen into. I leave his case in your hands with confidence and a sense of full security."

I

CHAPTER XXII.

COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION.

"All my spirits,

As if they had heard my passing-bell go for me,
Pull in their powers, and give me up to destiny."

Fletcher.

DREW a deep breath; it seemed to me the matter was ended. I was not at the pains to listen very attentively when the counsel for the prosecution rose, and began his summing up. (Not the suffused and lighthaired Mr. Bell, who had conducted the examinations, but the senior counsel; senior, but still young.) I listened, as we listen to things of secondary moment in a play, when we know how it is all coming out. His manner was a great contrast to the other speaker's, his voice a very inferior affair. He spoke conversationally, as if he had his finger in the button-hole of every juryman. I began to see he wasn't "addressing them" as across a gulf, but that he had a hold upon them, as being one of themselves; when he sneered at the posing counsel, he sneered from their side of the fence. Sutphen County is famed for being very clannish; it was not impossible that every juryman before him was more or less nearly related to him by birth or by connection. He was the rising lawyer of the county; they were all proud of him. It was possible that they wouldn't want to see him lose his case-a case, the like

op

of which had never been before the bar of Sutphen County since it had been a county, and had had a bar.

"It's been a great treat, I'm sure," he said. "We're not used tɔ such fine speaking here in this part of the country; and I, for one, have been quite carried away by it. I'm sure I can answer for all of you, that you've been very much pleased-very much pleased. When we put Tom Turner up for surrogate again, we'll know who to send for to stump the county for him." (Tom Turner was a very weak candidate for surrogate at the last election, who had been overwhelmingly defeated. There was an audible titter.) "I almost think I should vote for Tom Turner myself, if he spoke for him. I assure you, he quite carries me away. But, I'll tell you, there's one thing I come back to, after I've been carried away by this extraordinary tide of talk, and that is, Facts. And I don't know but I'm a little stubborner after I get back to them, than before, for I am just a trifle ashamed of myself for being taken off my feet that way. Facts, gentlemen of the jury, facts are what the law undertakes to deal with; not theories, nor flights of fancy.

"Now, this tramp business, gentlemen, you'll excuse me if I call that a very decided flight of fancy. I shouldn't like to call it anything else; the counsel's a stranger in these parts, and he's anxious we should be particularly good to strangers. He quotes the Bible about it, you know. Well, we'll call it a flight of fancy. That poor, stupid Dutchman, who was seen around that day by several witnesses, had about as much to do with the murder as my dog Major had. Now, that lane from Old Town Pond is a highway in everything but name. You all know as well as I do, people go across there

every day in the week without being bound to the Detmold farm-house; I suppose we must call it the cottage now-quaint little cottage, and all that sort of thing. It's a mighty damp, rickety, old farm-house, in point of fact, but since it's been occupied by city people, it's politer to say it is a cottage. The folks that have been in it this year must have got used to having foot passengers going through the yard, night and day. The place was shut up so long, everybody got in the habit of going along that way from Wickapogue and thereabouts; it cuts off half a mile or so. The tramp had as good a right as anybody to go through (that was no right at all, but he'd be as likely as any one to take it). He went through, most likely, when the family were in at tea, or maybe he struck off to the village through the fields before he got to the farm-yard. Again, the motive of the tramp was burglary, and no burglary has been committed; a footstool has been overturned and a couple of worthless articles are missing. We won't waste time over that. It speaks for itself.

"Now, a little about that kitchen stair door. Matilda's story was a plain, straightforward one, on the direct examination. You don't expect a poor Shinnecock halfbreed to stand up against a city lawyer's befogging questions. On the cross-examination she contradicted herself, as any one of her gauge of intellect would do. She shut that kitchen door and bolted it; she would have done it by force of habit, if she had been fast asleep. Sophia trusted her, and that shows she'd never failed to shut it up before. The lower part of that house was shut off from communication with the upper, as fast as bars and bolts could make it. A noisy little