ice of prostituting his profession.

Alicia advanced with extended hand.

"This is indeed kind, Judge," she exclaimed with a gracious smile. "I
hardly dared hope that my poor musicale would be so honored."

The old lawyer smiled good-humoredly as he replied gallantly:

"I don't know much about music, m'm; I came to see you." Looking around
he added: "You've got a nice place here."

He spoke in his characteristic manner--short, nervous, explosive
sentences, which had often terrified his opponents in court.

"Lawyers are such flatterers," laughed Alicia as she nervously fanned
herself, and looked around to see if her guests were watching.

"Lawyers only flatter when they want to," interrupted grimly Mr.
Jeffries, who had just joined the group.

Alicia turned to greet a new arrival and the lawyer continued chatting
with his host.

"I suppose you'll take a rest now, after your splendid victory," said
the banker.

Judge Brewster shook his head dubiously.

"No, sir, we lawyers never rest. We can't. No sooner is one case
disposed of than another crops up to claim our attention. The trouble
with this country is that we have too much law. If I were to be guilty
of an epigram I would say that the country has so much law that it is
practically lawless."

"So you're preparing another case, eh?" said Mr. Jeffries, interested.
"What is it--a secret?"

"Oh, no!" answered the lawyer, "the newspapers will be full of it in a
day or two. We are going to bring suit against the city. It's really a
test case that should interest every citizen; a protest against the
high-handed actions of the police."

The banker elevated his eyebrows.

"Indeed," he exclaimed. "What have the police been doing now?"

The lawyer looked at his client in surprise.

"Why, my dear sir, you must have seen by the papers what's been going on
in our city of late. The papers have been full of it. Police brutality,
illegal arrests, assaults in station houses, star-chamber methods that
would disgrace the middle ages. A state of affairs exists to-day in the
city of New York which is inconceivable. Here we are living in a
civilized country, every man's liberty is guaranteed by the
Constitution, yet citizens, as they walk our streets, are in greater
peril than the inhabitants of terror-stricken Russia. Take a police
official of Captain Clinton's type. His only notion of the law is brute
force and the night stick. A bully by nature, a man of the coarsest