acts into which it led him. He deeply
sympathized with Terry in the grief and mortification which he
suffered in being charged with having assaulted the marshal with a
deadly weapon in the presence of the Circuit Court in September, 1888.
He attempted to convince the Supreme Court that one of its members
had deliberately made a misrecital, in the order committing Terry
for contempt, and treated this as a mitigation of that individual's
subsequent attack on Justice Field. He did not, however, attempt to
gainsay the testimony of the numerous witnesses who swore that
Terry did try to draw his knife while yet in the court-room on that
occasion, and that, being temporarily prevented from doing so by
force, he completed the act as soon as this force was withdrawn,
and pursued the marshal with knife in hand, loudly declaring in
the hearing of the court, in language too coarse and vulgar to be
repeated, that he would do sundry terrible things to those who should
obstruct him on his way to his wife. As she was then in the custody
of the marshal and in his office, under an order of the court; and as
Terry had resisted her arrest and removal from the court-room until
overpowered by several strong men, and as he had instantly on being
released rushed madly from the court-room, drawing and brandishing
his knife as he went, the conclusion is irresistible that he was
determined upon her rescue from the marshal, if, with the aid of
his knife, he could accomplish it. That Mr. Montgomery allowed these
facts, which constitute the offense of an assault with a deadly
weapon, to go unchallenged, compels us to the charitable presumption
that he did not know the law.

A reading of the decisions on this subject would have taught him
that in order to constitute that offense it is not necessary that
the assailant should actually stab with his knife or shoot with his
pistol. The assault by Terry was commenced in the court-room, under
the eyes of the judges, and was a continuing act, ending only-with the
wrenching of the knife from his hands. It was all committed "in the
presence of the court," for the Supreme Court has decided in the Savin
case that "the jury-room and hallway were parts of the place in which
the court was required by law to hold its sessions, and that the
court, at least when in session, is present in every part of the place
set apart for its own use and for the use of its officers, jurors, and
witnesses, and that misbehavior in